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July 3, 2008
Contact: Omathanu Perumal, (605) 688-4745

Ethanol co-product may help in cancer treatments

BROOKINGS, S.D. — The key to a better drug delivery method for cancer patients may be growing all across the Midwest, South Dakota State University research suggests.

Assistant Professor Omathanu Perumal and his team in SDSU’s Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences have been working with submicroscopic particles to deliver medications using the corn protein, zein.

Zein is a protein found in distillers grains, a co-product of ethanol production. It is different from other proteins in its unique ability to prevent water absorption. This quality of zein has found applications ranging from food packaging to chewing gums.

Researchers at SDSU are preparing zein nanoparticles for drug delivery. Nanoparticles are tiny particles that can only be seen with an electron microscope. Scientists are entrapping a medication inside the nanoparticles, which Perumal notes are approximately 500 times smaller than the diameter of a strand of human hair.

The tiny size of these particles could lend assistance to new cancer therapies, where one challenge is treating the cancer cells without affecting the normal cells around it.

“We can utilize size. In general, the cancerous tissue is physiologically different from the normal tissue,” explains Perumal. “One of the things we see in the tumor tissue is that the blood vessels are much ‘leakier,’ whereas normal blood vessels don’t allow particles to be transported through them. Therefore, if you have really small particles, they will not go into normal tissue, but they can go into the cancerous tissue. This is called passive targeting.”

The drug-loaded zein nanoparticles are being delivered by injection in animal experiments, but future tests may explore oral, topical and other delivery methods.

When outside objects, including medications, get inside the body, the body’s immune system tries to get them out of the body. This, in turn, affects the length of time that drugs can work in the body before being expelled. But these nanoparticles are so tiny that the body doesn’t recognize and excrete them.

In the technique SDSU is exploring, drugs are encapsulated within the nanoparticles and delivered to the affected site. Perumal became interested in using corn zein to form nanoparticles because it satisfied a safe, biodegradable alternative to using a synthetic ingredient and could target specific areas because of its size. The dosage frequency is also reduced because the medication stays longer in the body. Perumal adds that many people, because of religious reasons, don’t take in animal proteins. That is one more reason to develop treatment options that use plant-based zein.

The team is currently working with a drug commonly used in treating breast cancer. They are experimenting with how much of the dose is delivered and its effectiveness compared to traditional methods of delivery. Perumal said the results show the treatment is meeting expectations.

Perumal’s work has been funded by the South Dakota Corn Utilization Council. SDSU has filed a provisional patent and the researchers are moving forward with early pre-clinical studies using mice.

Although his team is now working with human breast cancer cells, Perumal anticipates the possibility of expanding nanoparticle treatment for other conditions. For those with artery blockage around the heart, synthetic stents are inserted to help keep the artery open. Because the stent is a foreign object, the body sometimes tries to combat its existence, causing inflammation. By coating the stent with drug-loaded nanoparticles, Perumal hopes that this would be prevented.

As the research enters its third year, Perumal will continue trials with support from the South Dakota Board of Regents.

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June 30, 2008
Contact: David Roy, (605) 690-4536

NASA grant will fund satellite data project

BROOKINGS, S.D. — A major grant from NASA will help South Dakota State University scientists make satellite data easier to use and access via the Internet.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has awarded $3.29 million to a five-year project led by professor David Roy, of SDSU’s Geographic Information Science Center of Excellence.

Roy said the project is a collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey, or USGS, through its Center for Earth Resources Observations and Science near Sioux Falls. The USGS center is the main federal repository for satellite images including those taken from Landsat. Since 1972, Landsat satellites have been sensing dedicated images of the Earth — now the longest such record in existence.

“This project will provide the USGS with a state-of-the-art strategy for creating the land monitoring data sets needed by the nation's resource managers and an exciting opportunity for evaluating the next generation of Landsat processing and delivery systems,” said Tom Loveland, the USGS Landsat science team leader. “The project is timely because as of this year, Landsat images became available free of charge.”

Roy said the proposal is to take Landsat observations every 16 days for all the contiguous United States and Alaska for a seven-year period and process those data so that they’re available to the user community over the Internet in a seamless manner. Researchers also intend to characterize the land cover from the data.

“Right now if you’re in a high school or you’re in a geography department of a university and you want to use Landsat data, you have to be an expert in processing and accessing the data,” Roy said. “The point here is that the user community really wants to be able to obtain processed Landsat data more simply.”

The project also sets out to fill in gaps in the data. Since 2003, Roy said, there has been a problem with the Landsat sensor so that it has been unable to record the data for about 22 percent of each image. In addition, an average of about 35 percent of the Landsat data is obscured by clouds. Those gaps present ongoing challenges for users.

“We need a way of getting rid of the gaps,” Roy said.

The SDSU project will do that by using data from another satellite system called MODIS. Roy worked extensively with that system in a previous position at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

Integrating the data from the two satellite systems can be done but it will be complicated. Scientists will spend the first half of the five-year period developing a prototype at SDSU’s GIS Center of Excellence. Then they’ll move the system to the USGS and put it into operation.

“This work over the next five years will be one of the benchmarking exercises for perhaps working out how to do processing and distribution for the next generation of Landsat,” Roy said.

Tom Loveland and SDSU professor Matthew Hansen are co-investigators on the project.

“This project has the potential to fundamentally change the way satellite data are accessed and used,” Hansen said. “Our experience in processing and characterizing Landsat imagery will enhance the utility of the data for a whole range of users. This is a very exciting project.”

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June 27, 2008
Contact: Dennis Helder, (605) 688-4526

New SDSU engineering facility includes space for industry

BROOKINGS, S.D. — A new SDSU engineering facility taking shape at the south end of campus includes a first for South Dakota State University — a designated space for industry.

“This is a new paradigm, to actually have a facility like this right on campus. The top floor is going to be our university-industry interaction floor, where industry can rent space to be close to faculty and students,” said professor Dennis Helder, head of the SDSU Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “If a company is trying to start up and develop a new product, they can rent space to be with people here, or if a company is trying to re-design a product, they can also have access to the university environment.”

Helder said one benefit is that it would allow students to look at companies they might want to work for after they graduate.

“I’ve had numerous companies show interest in having that space available to them. In fact, I suspect that when we open the doors, that space will already be full,” Helder said.

The lower floor of the new facility will be designated for SDSU’s photovoltaics research group, which currently has lab space in three different buildings. The group’s new laboratory spaces are being built on bedrock, providing additional stability from vibrations. That added stability helps in using precise techniques such as electron microscopy, which is important in characterizing and inspecting semiconductor devices. The new facility will also have a state-of-the-art “clean room” where researchers can make extremely small devices, such as nanosensors and structures that that require a very clean environment for fabrication.

The ground floor of the new building will be devoted to computer science and software engineering — labs, offices, and classrooms.

The second floor will hold the remaining labs, classrooms and offices for the electrical engineering faculty.
Helder said the third-floor university-industry interaction floor is an idea put forward by some SDSU electrical engineering alumni as a place where companies might lease space for anywhere from six months to several years. Ideally, Helder said, companies that use the space might then graduate and move into new quarters, but still close to SDSU — perhaps on the new SDSU Innovation Campus.

“This is not a competing entity with the Innovation Campus, rather just a really small incubator-type of facility specifically oriented toward electrical engineering hardware and software types of activities,” Helder said. “I think it will be a real complement to the new research park in that we hope to feed new companies and existing companies out there once they grow and need a little more space than we can offer.”

The building that is taking shape right now is just the east wing, or the first phase of a two-part project. The department hopes to add a west wing in coming years.

Currently, the building has no official name. However, expectations are that it may be named for donors since the building is entirely being funded by alumni gifts.
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May 30, 2008

SDSU Innovation Campus: Epicenter for entrepreneurship, innovation, and collaboration

BROOKINGS, S.D. — On land where SDSU used to plant wheat and soybeans for crop experiments, the footings of the South Dakota State University Innovation Campus are taking root.

And the returns won't be harvested in bushels per acre, but in jobs created, new companies launched, and new collaborations between business, industry, university and government.

Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director Teresa McKnight said that's the idea behind the SDSU Innovation Campus. It's a place designed to help university researchers to transfer technology from the university to private industry and government partners in order to bring those ideas to the marketplace.

“When you look at the creation of new companies, both national and international, and if you look back to where these companies originated, you will find most of the companies originated from a researcher in an academic environment,” McKnight said.

Contractors broke ground Nov. 15, 2007, on a 30,000-square-foot incubator and multitenant building as the first structure on the Innovation Campus. Phase 2 of that project, in the future, will add another 30,000 square feet to that facility, for a total of 60,000 square feet.

Meanwhile, plans are proceeding to install infrastructure – roads, curb, gutter, sidewalk, and utilities. By fall of 2008 or early spring of 2009, construction is to begin on a separate Seed Technology Building near the junction of 22nd Avenue and the U.S. Highway 14 Bypass. It will have office and lab space totaling approximately 36,000 square feet.

McKnight said there's a natural synergy that results when companies locate close to universities. It makes it easier for companies to work with researchers to test their own ideas, or in some cases, to commercialize university scientists' ideas.

“These companies want to be attached or want to locate next door to the academic environment because they want to be next door to these researchers. They also want to employ the best and brightest undergraduate and graduate students within the university,” McKnight said.

McKnight noted that university-related research parks also offer companies the same sort of synergy from “clustering” companies together — placing biotechnology, engineering, software and hardware companies close to each other, for example.

The benefits of University-related research parks are not just for new start-up companies. There are times when it makes sense for an existing, well-established company to locate within a research park.

What might be ahead for the SDSU Innovation Campus? McKnight has a sense of that from her previous job working at an established university-related research park at Utah State University.

“Utah State created a park in the mid 1980s. Thirty-eight acres of state-owned property was set aside to develop the research park. When I left in December of 2006, I had only 2 acres of the 38 acres left to develop, so we purchased additional property to expand from 38 acres to 173 acres.”

At that time in late 2006, McKnight said, the research park had 48 companies that employed 2,103 employees, and 980 of those employees were Utah State University students. In 2006, those companies' revenues totaled $132 million.

“In the state of Utah they use a multiplier of three. In other words, if those companies brought in $132 million, they put $396 million back into Utah's economy,” McKnight said. “University-related research parks have a powerful impact in state economies.”

Learn more about the SDSU Innovation Campus at its Web site, www.sdstate.edu/innovationcampus .

May 23, 2008

SDSU research: New tools against skin cancer

BROOKINGS, S.D. — There's something new under the sun at South Dakota State University: Researchers are working with molecules that protect against skin cancer and may even help undo the sun's damage.

Distinguished professor Chandradhar Dwivedi, head of the Pharmaceutical Sciences Department in the College of Pharmacy at SDSU, said the work could be commercialized within 10 years.

“We are looking at a number of molecules that can be used with sunscreen or without sunscreen. They are not simply blocking the radiation, but they are reversing the damage caused by radiation,” Dwivedi said.

Exposure to ultraviolet light, especially in summertime, can contribute to skin cancer. Farmers and others who spend long hours exposed to sunlight are among those most at risk.

People are becoming more aware of the risk of skin cancer thanks to educational efforts. More people are wearing sunscreens, though Dwivedi cautioned that sunscreens must be re-applied at regular intervals to provide optimum protection.

“We have been saying for a long time that prevention is the best medicine. We have to make the effort to prevent the disease before we treat it,” Dwivedi said.

Nevertheless, some new strategies are emerging that could make sunscreens and lotions even more effective against skin cancer. Here's a look at SDSU's involvement:

— Alpha-santalol is the name of a molecule that is one of the main components of oil of sandalwood. Dwivedi has made alpha-santalol a focus of his research for nearly 15 years.

“This product has been very effective in preventing skin cancer caused by chemicals and by UV radiation. We have done our work in animal models. Now it's ready to go for testing in humans,” Dwivedi said. “Best of all, this molecule has a very nice fragrance, so people will not mind using it. It smells nice, and at the same time it prevents chemically caused or UV-induced skin cancer.”

— A molecule called sarcophine-diol, made from a product called sarcophine that comes from coral found in the Red Sea, has been a focus of SDSU research over the past five years. Sarcophine-diol is effective in micrograms, as compared to milligrams for other chemopreventive products. In other words it is effective in a concentration of about one-thousandth of what the scientific literature suggests about other chemopreventive agents used against chemically and UV-induced skin cancer. SDSU testing has looked at two models so far and is now expanding to other models.

Dwivedi said collaboration with SDSU assistant professor Hesham Fahmy is moving that work forward. Fahmy, a chemist, already has one patent from his work with sarcophine-diol at the University of Mississippi when he joined SDSU's College of Pharmacy in 2004. Dwivedi, Fahmy and SDSU are now pursuing licensing of the patent based on their collaborative research of sarcophine-diol.

Dwivedi said SDSU research will also look at combining products that protect against skin cancer to provide additive/synergistic effects on the protective properties of these molecules.

SDSU is also trying to assess whether the products' potential benefits go beyond protection.

“We hope to include it in sun screen or lotion. Apply it once, and you are set for the day. We are hopeful that it will not only prevent skin cancer but may actually treat skin cancer,” Dwivedi said.

Fahmy explained that skin cancer occurs in two stages: initiation, when normal skin cells turn to precancerous skin cells and remain so for a number of years; and then promotion, a long stage of 10 to 20 years in which precancerous cells can become cancerous. There is a chance to intervene in that second stage so that promotion doesn't take place and the individual doesn't get skin cancer.

He added that cancer is able to proceed by outwitting the body's mechanism that orders programmed cell death, called apoptosis, for cells that have been genetically damaged.

“After initiation, you have these precancerous cells. But when you use these compounds, they encourage these precancerous cells to commit suicide and regenerate rather than turn cancerous,” Fahmy said. “So in this sense they can undo some of the damage. These compounds reinforce the programmed cell death process.”

May 22, 2008

SDSU research: Native American tea has health benefits

BROOKINGS, S.D. – South Dakota State University research shows that a Native American tea used in traditional medicine can help knock out upper respiratory infections.

In addition the tea is rich in antioxidants that help protect against cancer and other illnesses.

Professor Fathi Halaweish in SDSU's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry said those are among the findings from his analysis of a native tea used by communities of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux Tribe of the Lake Traverse Reservation in northeastern South Dakota. Though the tea can be consumed routinely, it is also used specifically to treat sore throats.

“I have tried it personally. It does heal your sore throat,” Halaweish said. “It contains some compounds that specifically target the bacteria that are part of the upper sore throat infection. Our research supports the long history the Native American people have for using the plant in this way.”

Currently the work is funded by the Big Coulee District of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux Tribe, Halaweish said.

Halaweish focuses a part of his research on discovering new drugs by isolating organic compounds from natural sources. Plants have formed the basis for treatment of diseases in traditional medicine for thousands of years, and continue to play a major role in the primary health care of about 80 percent of the world's inhabitants, he notes.

 “We are looking at the potential of this Native American medicine as a nutraceutical product,” Halaweish said.

That means the Native American medicine would not be marketed as a drug, but as a food product that could have medicinal or health benefits.

Halaweish subjected the tea to a series of tests to detect any antibiotic, anti-cancer, and anti-diabetic properties. In addition Halaweish did toxicity studies on the cell culture to verify that the herbal tea and the compounds it contains are safe to consume.

Halaweish said he'll be pleased if the tea proves to be a product that tribal members can produce and market commercially.

“I'm very happy that this will work for the Native American communities, that we can be a part of their vision for marketing some of their Native American plants,” Halaweish said. “This is part of our mission as a land-grant institution, to help out communities in our state.”

May 14, 2008

SDSU research: Using flax against colon cancer

BROOKINGS, S.D. — South Dakota State University studies are exploring the potential for flax to prevent and possibly even treat colon cancer.

Distinguished professor Chandradhar Dwivedi, head of the Pharmaceutical Sciences Department in the College of Pharmacy at SDSU, said his work is funded partly by the North Dakota Oilseed Council.

National Agricultural Statistics Service figures show North Dakota was the nation's leader in flax production in 2007 by a huge margin, followed by Montana, South Dakota, and Minnesota.

Dwivedi said while he was growing up in northeastern India, his family grew some flax. But it was his curiosity about a different crop, mustard, that led to his flax research.

“In our homes, most of the cooking was done in mustard oil. In that area, the incidence of cardiovascular disease and cancer was very low, so in the back of our minds we had the idea for generations that mustard must be good for you,” Dwivedi said. “When I got into science and research, I became curious about what is in mustard. I found out it had Omega-3 fatty acid, which makes up about 24 percent of mustard oil.”

Unfortunately, Dwivedi noted, the mustard used by Americans on their hot dogs and hamburgers has the fatty acids taken out. So in looking around for a crop more familiar to Americans that might provide similar health benefits, Dwivedi started to work with flax. Flax is even higher in Omega-3 fatty acids than mustard is.

“I did research first on flaxseed oil, which has roughly 58 percent Omega-3 fatty acids. It prevented colon cancer development in animals,” Dwivedi said. “Then I got further into flax research and looked at flaxseed meal. Flaxseed meal has Omega-3 fatty acids, just as in flaxseed oil, but at the same time it has a chemical known as lignan. Lignans also have been reported to be cancer chemopreventive. Flaxseed meal has lignan as well as Omega-3. It's much better than flaxseed oil.”

Dwivedi performed experiments to evaluate whether flax prevented chemically induced colon cancer. He also experimented by including flax in the diets of mice that have a genetic mutation to spontaneously develop intestinal cancer.

Dwivedi's research showed that both flaxseed oil and flax meal did help prevent colon cancer development.

“It's quite remarkable. So now we are looking at the effect of the chemicals that are present in the flax meal lignans to see if they could treat cancer — if they could destroy the cancer cells that have been already formed.”

Dwivedi presented an overview of some of his flax research at the 62nd Flax Institute of the United States, held in March in Fargo.