STEPHENVILLE — Tarleton State University’s Dr. Janice Speshock has been awarded a $370,980 grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, one of the 27 institutes that make up the National Institute of Health, to study the long-term effects of nanoparticles.
This is the first time for someone at Tarleton State to receive an NIH grant. Dr. Speshock, a professor of biological sciences at the university, said she is thrilled to be the first recipient.
“These funds will allow us to bring several junior and senior undergraduate students into the laboratory and teach them modern techniques in cell and molecular biology as well as learn about toxicology, a course not currently a part of the curriculum,” she said. “We have found that students working hands-on in the laboratory are generally more excited about science and their classwork and will have better opportunities following graduation.”
Not only will the grant help students interested in biomedical research, but successful execution will also help attract additional NIH funds and increase the awareness of Tarleton State’s growing undergraduate and graduate programs in biomedical and clinical professions, she said.
“My collaborator from Texas A&M AgriLife, Dr. Jeff Brady, and I have been training graduate students at the master’s degree level for years on advanced techniques in genomics (all of the genes in the cell) and transcriptomics (if any of these genes are turned on or off), which has allowed them to get very good jobs or placement into Ph.D. programs,” said Dr. Speshock. “However, this R15 AREA grant from the NIH is designed to bring this training to the undergraduate level.”
The nanoparticle study will look at how the respiratory systems of scientists who work with such materials might be affected from continuous exposure.
“Although short-term exposure to these particles appears to do little harm, there is not much known about long-term effects,” Dr. Speshock said. “The scientists and engineers who make these nanoparticles are in continuous exposure to them, and with respiration being one of the most likely sources of workplace exposure, this project was designed to see what would happen to cells of the upper and lower airway if they were exposed continuously for months.”
She explained that nanoparticles are synthesized materials that are very small (less than 100 nanometers in size), which give them unique properties compared to the bulk metals from which they originated. Cobalt-based nanomaterials, specifically, have desirable electrical, magnetic, and catalytic properties that make them useful in a variety of science, engineering, and medicinal applications.
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