BIO5 Latest News

  • The 2009 BioME Summer Institute in June marked the beginning of a year-long partnership between 10 University of Arizona (UA) graduate fellows from all areas of the life sciences and 14 Tucson K-12 teachers, who will work together in the teachers' classrooms this fall.

  • The prestigious Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) has recognized a Tucson High Magnet School (THMS) student for research that could one day help lead to new medications to treat addictions, delusions, and other mental illnesses.

  • Thanks to generous statewide support, 22 exceptional southern Arizona high school students will have the chance to gain hands-on experience with the biosciences and environmental health science this summer during the annual KEYS (Keep Engaging Youth in Science) Internship Program. The University of Arizona’s BIO5 Institute and the Southwest Environmental Health Sciences Center (SWEHSC) at the UA College of Pharmacy direct the program.

  • A company based on a University of Arizona chemist's research may one day speed drug discovery and disease detection.
     
    The new company, bioVidria, was started by Mary Wirth, UA Professor of Chemistry and a BIO5 member. BioVidria takes microarrays―slides containing collections of molecules that are used to detect other molecules, including those whose presence indicates disease―and coats them with a very thin layer of silica nanoparticles. The nanoparticle-coated microarrays are 10 times more sensitive than microarrays without the coating, and so they can detect much smaller concentrations of molecules―and thus potentially also detect cancers and other diseases sooner than is currently possible. The coated microarrays can also aid in developing drugs to treat diseases, and they can help with other forms of chemical analysis.

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