Labs offer team science, exciting research opportunities for students

Lance Thurlow, PhD, left, and Aimin Peng, PhD, right.

Adams School of Dentistry’s expert faculty and researchers are often available to mentor students and offer lab work opportunities that round out educational experiences. For students interested in participating in research and gaining access to researchers engaging in team science, there are several labs at the dental school that can provide positive and impactful experiences.

The Peng Lab and the Thurlow Lab both collaborate with researchers at ASOD, but they also work across UNC Chapel Hill, partnering with the School of Medicine, Gillings School of Global Public Health and Eshelman School of Pharmacy, among others. For both Aimin Peng, PhD, and Lance Thurlow, PhD, their favorite collaborators are students interested in their research fields.

Student research opportunities

Peng said he enjoys meeting with the students working in his lab each work, staying up to date on their progress but also learning about any new discoveries.

“Every week we learn from each other about progress, and we have lab meetings to discuss where they are and what they need. Our lab members are super nice, very collaborative and are a good group of researchers,” he said.

Oral cancer and DNA repair

The Peng Lab focuses on oral cancer and DNA repair, areas that are in need of more research efforts. Peng said oral cancer is not as well known as other types of cancer and isn’t studied as often.

“It’s more common than people think, the sixth most common cancer worldwide, and outcomes have not been improved for several decades,” Peng said. “Not a ton of research has been invested into this cancer type, and while there has been research progress in other types of cancer, the study of oral cancer is still relatively limited and doesn’t have many new treatment options.”

The Peng Lab has projects currently funded by the National Institutes of Health, including one from National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) in which researchers tried to capitalize a new protein kinase, an anti-cancer target, combining biochemistry, cell biology, animal models and drug discovery.

“We hope to identify new mechanisms but also find new therapeutics,” Peng said.

Members of the Peng Lab.

Research that drives potential treatment options

A National Cancer Institute (NCI) funded project looks at how the cytoskeletal network participates in DNA repair. “The project highlights the different organelles, the different components of the cell that come together and achieve important cell functions, which has strong implications for cancer therapy,” Peng said. “If we target this network, used heavily in cancer treatment, and often used in combination with drugs, our study would provide a good explanation for why the combinations would work and how to make them more potent and more selective in the correct groups of patients.”

Members of the Peng Lab work on a research project.

The Peng Lab’s DNA repair work ties in nicely with oral cancer, as DNA repair is important for maintaining genomic integrity and preventing cell mutations that may lead to cancer down the line. DNA repair is also key in treatment outcomes, as chemotherapy and radiation inflict heavy damage to DNA, causing cells to start the repair process. But cancer often hijacks the process, so researchers like Peng are exploring ways to outsmart the cancer cells.

“If we see how DNA repair works, we can provide a more sensitive response to existing cancer treatments. It also offers the possibility of more selective, personalized approaches to care. If cancer utilizes DNA repair mechanisms to survive the treatment, there are selective ways to intervene with just that particular mechanism specific to that patient or group of patients. It’s a way to be effective and selective and improve treatment outcomes. Not just for oral cancer, but all cancers,” he said.

A multidisciplinary team

Thurlow’s lab is also a place for students and researchers to explore questions together in a multidisciplinary fashion, and the lab’s focus is on diabetes and its effects on infection and bacterial behavior.  The Thurlow Lab has a multidisciplinary focus and collaborates with scientists at ASOD and other schools throughout the UNC system.

“Our primary focus is MRSA research, and we’ve shown that in a diabetic environment, it causes invasive infection in clinical populations,” Thurlow said. “We discovered that the reason it becomes invasive is mass immune suppression in diabetics, and we’re trying to figure out the mechanism of immune suppression in a diabetic infection environment.”

Lance Thurlow with members of his lab team.

Discoveries in immunology and pathogenesis

Thurlow and his lab team have discovered how glucose provides the food and the fuel for severe infections like Staphylococcus aureus and oral strep. The researchers have published some of their findings focused on immunology and bacterial pathogenesis.

“If you prevent the ability of S. aureus to use glucose, it’s not invasive,” he said. Additionally, “diabetes  causes a pseudo-starvation in the cells. Immune cells need glucose to identify and attack bacteria, but they’re blind to the glucose without insulin, so they think they’re starving and won’t fight infection.”

The lab has also worked with the Marsico Lung Institute creating mouse models to look at cystic fibrosis and how the disease responds in diabetic and non-diabetic environments.

Members of the Thurlow Lab work on a research project.

“Diabetes changes the behavior of bacteria in the lungs allowing multiple species to cause severe infection,” Thurlow said.

Antibiotic efficacy in diabetics is another project underway at the Thurlow Lab and, the work has implications for periodontal treatments and other oral complications, since periodontal disease is driven by bacteria.

“There is often an antibiotic treatment failure in people with diabetes, and we wanted to understand why? We found infections in diabetes can result in spontaneous resistance to antibiotics,” he said. “It takes over the entire population, and we’re trying to figure out why that happens.”

Thurlow has a lab team in place with a senior post-doc and a graduate student, but he’s always looking for new researchers to join his team or for students to mentor.

“Our projects are very interesting, and we have a very relaxed culture,” he said. “We have a great overall dynamic, everyone shares, and we have an open-door policy.”

To learn more about the Peng Lab and the Thurlow Lab, reach out to Aimin Peng and Lance Thurlow.