News

Rebecca Owen recipient of UNC Chancellor Award

Syanne D. Olson — 2012-12-21T15:36:38Z

Rebecca Owen, administrative manager for the CF Center was recognized by Chancellor Holden Thorp on December 6, at a luncheon honoring all seven UNC employees chosen for the 2012 Chancellor’s Awards. The Chancellor's Awards were established in 1991 as a way to recognize UNC employees for their contributions and accomplishments to their department and the University as a whole.

Rebecca is credited with helping the CF Center grow from a funding base of $300,000 in 1998 to its current $14 million in annual expenditures. Through Rebecca’s tireless dedication to federal grants, private foundation, industry funding mechanisms, and budget planning, the Center has been able to fulfill, and continue, its research and therapeutics mission.

To see the other recipient's for this year's Chancellor's Award, click here.

CF Center Researchers Publish Second Edition of Epithelial Cell Culture Protocols

Syanne D. Olson — 2012-11-07T19:50:00Z

Epithelial Cell Culture Protocols, Second Edition provides a cross section of up-to-date culture protocols for the most heavily studied cell systems and featured supporting technologies. Written in the successful Methods in Molecular Biology series format, chapters include introductions to their respective topics, lists of the necessary materials and reagents, step-by-step, readily reproducible protocols, and notes on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls.

Researchers reveal evolution’s design for keeping lungs clean and healthy

Syanne D. Olson — 2012-08-24T20:40:00Z

With each breath, we inhale life-sustaining, oxygen-rich air. But that same air is also riddled with germs that threaten our health. Now, in collaboration between the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Medicine, scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill reveal evolution’s design for keeping our lungs clean and healthy. The discovery, published August 24 in Science, not only revamps previously held beliefs on how the human airway functions, but also provides a unifying theory for how to treat seemingly different airway diseases, ranging from cystic fibrosis to asthma. “The air we breathe isn’t exactly clean, and we take in many dangerous elements every minute,” said Michael Rubinstein, Ph.D., UNC’s John P. Barker Distinguished Professor of chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences. “We need a mechanism to remove all the junk we breathe in, and the way that is done is with a very sticky substance called mucus, which lines the airways and catches these particles before they reach the epithelial cells in the lungs. Hair-like extensions of epithelial cells called cilia then propel the mucus out of our airways and get rid of these dangerous particles.” But if mucus is so sticky, why doesn’t it stick to the cilia that get rid of it? Until now, researchers believed that the answer was water, which bathed the cilia and shielded them from the mucus. However, the researchers, including first author Brian Button, Ph.D., of the Cystic Fibrosis Research and Treatment Center in the UNC School of Medicine, now show that the water model is fundamentally wrong. Instead, a mesh of molecules is tethered to each hair-like cilium resembling a brush; and as each cilium sways back and forth, the brush collectively propels the mucus forward. This brush-like layer keeps the sticky mucus from reaching the cell membrane, ensuring the normal flow of mucus out of the airways. But in some lung diseases, like cystic fibrosis or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the brush becomes compressed and actually impairs the normal beating of cilia and healthy flow of mucus. Rubinstein said that whenever the mucus layer gets too dense, it can crash through the brush and stick to cells. “The collapse of this brush is what can lead to immobile mucus and resulting infection, inflammation, and eventually severe disease,” he said The discovery could guide researchers to develop novel therapeutic strategies to treat chronic lung disease, such as by using drugs to make the mucus less sticky. Rubinstein and colleagues next plan to design ways to keep the mucus concentration at the necessary level. Their hope is to use these new findings to develop new treatments for a variety of respiratory ailments.

-Adapted from UNC News Services

Tissue Core Publishes New Chapter in "Cystic Fibrosis, Methods in Molecular Biology"

keilson — 2011-09-06T16:56:17Z

The new 2011 edition of Cystic Fibrosis, Methods in Molecular Biology is now published, featuring the most up-to-date methods for culturing primary airway epithelial cells, courtesy of our Tissue Core team and affiliates!

Read Chapter 18: "Primary Epithelial Cell Models for Cystic Fibrosis Research" (pdf)

The chapter, along with many other resources and information on culturing airway epithelials, is also available on the Tissue Procurement and Cell Culture Core page.

Gentzsch et. al, JBC Paper of the Week (Oct. 15, 2010)

watsonmj — 2010-10-15T13:57:27Z

Martina Gentzsch, Hong Dang, Yan Dang, Agustin Garcia-Caballero, Hamsa Suchindran, Richard C. Boucher, and M. Jackson Stutts

The Cystic Fibrosis Transmembrane Conductance Regulator Impedes Proteolytic Stimulation of the Epithelial Na⁺ Channel

J. Biol. Chem. published October 15, 2010 as doi:10.1074/jbc.M110.155259

JBC POTW

Congratulations to our Peer Recognition Winner!

keilson — 2010-07-13T15:40:00Z

I am happy to announce that Phillip Clapp from Dr. Randell's Lab was selected from a competitive pool of 172 nominations across our UNC-Chapel Hill campus and been recognized by The Employee Forum Awards and Recognition.

Please see the link below for information on a reception to be held in his honor. We hope to see you there!

Reception Invitation

New Equipment in the Molecular Core

keilson — 2010-07-11T17:45:00Z

The Molecular Biology Core has been able to purchase a new imaging system! Please look over the FluorChemQ brochure from Alpha Innotech for detailed information. It is designed for quantitative Western blotting with chemiluminescence and fluorescence imaging, but it can be used for a variety of applications, including fluorescent DNA and protein gels (ethidium bromide stains, etc.), colorimetric protein gels, and colony plate imaging. In addition, it can accept multi-plex fluorescent westerns because it has a variety of emissions filters built in, so it can quantify more than one protein per gel and resolve
co-migrating proteins. It also has image capture software for ease of publication as well as record keeping and software for accurate quantification.