Heal faster. Be healthier. Live better.

Buoyed by three new NIH grants totaling nearly $5 million, Knight Campus researchers are merging engineering, science and medicine to improve health

November 29, 2021

Synthetic biologist Calin Plesa, computational biochemist Parisa Hosseinzadeh and bioengineer Marian Hettiaratchi came to Oregon from around the world to improve lives through discovery. The three early career faculty members share one of the Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact’s trademark research neighborhoods, where principal investigators specializing in complementary fields focus their teams, labs, and life’s work on societal impact. Less than two years after starting at the Knight Campus, the three researchers received National Institutes of Health grants totaling nearly $5 million, supporting powerful research with the potential to help us heal faster, be healthier and live better.

Neighborhood Approach Fosters Impact

Protein engineering and synthetic biology is the focus in their neighborhood, where they work to develop peptides and other new therapeutics and new materials that can help ward off cancer, treat diseases of the central nervous system, prevent antibiotic resistance and enable better recovery and speed healing in bones and muscles.

Neighborhood Approach Fosters Impact

Protein engineering and synthetic biology form the focus of the Knight Campus research neighborhood that Hosseinzadeh, Hettiaratchi, and Plesa share. The scientists work to develop peptides and other new therapeutics and new materials that can help ward off cancer, treat diseases of the central nervous system, prevent antibiotic resistance and enable better recovery and speed healing in bones and muscles.

During a 2-year time frame, the Hosseinzadeh, Plesa and Hettiaratchi labs had:

43

grant proposals submitted

$6.5M

in awards received

10

graduate students

2

postdocs

Marian Hettiaratchi

Bioengineer, assistant professor UO Knight Campus

Marian Hettiaratchi joined the Knight Campus in 2020. Prior to that, she was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on combining chemical and biomedical engineering approaches to create effective biomaterials to deliver proteins for tissue repair.

Hettiaratchi’s NIH project addresses treatment of severe injuries that often result in impaired tissue regeneration. She is seeking to generate a biomaterial platform to enable the precise delivery of multiple proteins from a single material. Because this biomaterial can be easily adapted to different types of proteins and tissue injuries, it has the potential to enhance repair in many different tissues.

Explore Hettiaratchi's Award

“We know that there are a lot of different molecules and cells and proteins that are typically involved in tissue repair…What we don't know is what kind of timing we need to deliver different therapeutics to achieve robust repair or healing.”

Marian Hettiaratchi

Calin Plesa

Synthetic biologist, assistant professor UO Knight Campus

Calin Plesa joined the Knight Campus in 2019. His research interests lie at the intersection of biochemistry, protein engineering, microbiology, synthetic biology, genetics and technology. Before joining the Knight Campus, he was a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA.

Plesa’s NIH project addresses the growing need for antibodies for both basic research and therapeutics. Currently there are major limitations in the availability of antibodies and our ability to develop new antibodies. This research aims to create a platform for generating and testing antibodies for every protein present in an organism, around 20,000 in humans. It promises to be an order-of-magnitude improvement over current high-throughput methods of generating antibodies.

Explore Plesa's Award

“My lab works at the interface of many different fields. And what we're mainly concerned about is scaling technologies…How do you build 100,000 biosensors at once? Or how do you generate antibodies against all of the proteins in the human body, instead of generating them one-by-one?”

Calin Plesa

Parisa Hosseinzadeh

Computational biochemist, assistant professor UO Knight Campus

Parisa Hosseinzadeh joined the Knight Campus in 2020. Her work focuses on the development of new tools to enhance human life, especially through protein and peptide design and the use of large data. Before joining the Knight Campus, she worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of David Baker at the University of Washington’s Institute for Protein Design.

Hosseinzadeh’s NIH project is focused on generating peptides — small chains of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins — as powerful, novel therapeutics peptides could be the solutions to deadly diseases such as cancer, new viruses, and antibiotic-resistance.

Explore Hosseinzadeh's Award

“Proteins are awesome. I think they do most of the work that our body does. I like studying them, and like thinking about this complicated tiny world inside us.”

Parisa Hosseinzadeh

Together, the Hosseinzadeh, Plesa and Hettiaratchi labs received 10 grants over two years:

3

from the National Institutes of Health

1

from the National Science Foundation

4

from foundations

1

from an industry sponsor

Next-Generation, Creative Problem Solvers

The Knight Campus research neighborhood structure with its flexible, open bench laboratories and other shared spaces allows for an increased sense of community and connection among faculty, staff, and students across different teams tackling complementary scientific challenges. Students and research trainees are an integral part of that structure, and Knight Campus PIs play an important role in mentoring the future researchers of tomorrow, including undergraduates in the Knight Campus Undergraduate Scholars program, graduate students in the Knight Campus Graduate Internship Program, Ph.D. students in the Bioengineering program and postdoctoral scholars.

“Students have to talk to each other because they see each other all the time. They get to ask questions from experts in the field, like people who have expertise in areas I don't have,” Hosseinzadeh said. “They're exposed to different types of research. Which helps them find their own path in the future, create their own collaborations. I think these interactions are the most important things.”