Mark Douglas has received an Undergraduate Summer Internship at Genzyme Corporation working in the LSD (Lysosomal Storage Disorder) diagnostics and development group. There are numerous LSD's and this research group is trying to develop an assay that that tests for five specific disorders at once for use in newborn screening. Specifically, Mark is working on optimizing the assay for Niemann-Pick disease. Individuals affected by Niemann-Pick disease lack the enzyme, Acid sphingomyelinase, required to break down Sphingomyelin. There is an accumulation of the protein and adverse side effects including mental retardation and death. The study was built on research by Yijun Li of the American Association for Clinical Chemistry. - Summer 2006 Tennyson Doane has received an Undergraduate Summer Student Appointment with the Earth and Environmental Sciences (EES) Division at the LosAlamos National Laboratory. The Actinide Chemistry and Repository Science Program (ACRSP) team, as part of the EES-12 group located in Carlsbad New Mexico, is investigating the environmental chemistry of multivalent actinides and analogs in the subsurface. Tenny will work in a well equipped laboratory and utilize a wide spectrum of analytical techniques to perform this work that includes absorption spectrometry, electrochemical techniques, laser spectroscopy, synchrotron-based X-ray analysis, ICP-MS, ion and gas chromatography, and radiochemical counting techniques.- Summer 2006

L. Mark Hall (left ’97) Lowell Hall (right ’59) flank Dr. Chris Lipinski who spoke at a recent meeting of scientists hosted by ENC. Dr. Chris Lipinski was the featured speaker at the November meeting of the Boston Area Group for Informatics and Modeling (BAGIM) held in Shrader Lecture Hall at ENC. The arrangements for the evening were handled by L. Mark Hall (BAGIM director of communications) and Lowell Hall (newly-elected program chairman for BAGIM). BAGIM members include pharmaceutical scientists from Astra-Zeneca, Millennium, Pfizer, Novartis, Wyeth, Arqule, Vertex, Abbott Bioresearch, and others in the Boston area. The presentation by Lipinski dealt with the current problems facing pharmaceutical companies as they attempt to make use of the Human Genome Project results as well as difficulties in the experimental measurement of drug properties. Attending from ENC were chemistry professors Timothy Wooster and Lowell Hall and students Tenny Doane (chemistry/English ’08), Connie Slocum (biology ’07), Ha Shin (math ’08), Jen Smith (biology ’06), and Andrea Steigleder (chemistry ’06). Dr. Lipinski, a medicinal chemist at Pfizer Pharmaceutical Global (Groton, CT), established a laboratory in 1990 that combines computations and experimental physical property measurements. He has authored over 190 publications and invited presentations and has 17 issued US patents. Lipinski was recently honored by The American Chemical Society for the development of the groundbreaking Lipinski “Rule of Fives,” widely used in drug design and development. He is also the recipient of the 2005 E. B. Hershberg Award for Important Discoveries in Medicinally Active Substances and is a member of the TB Alliance Scientific Advisory Committee. Christian Scholar Winter '06

The Chemistry Department recently finished the installation of a new Atomic Absorption Spectrometer. With the addition of this instrument to the department's already impressive collection, ENC can now offer it's students a full range of options for analytical and environmental analysis. The Varian AA240 will allow the students to analyze soil and water samples for trace metals such as Lead, Arsenic, and Zinc at the parts-per-million level. Under complete comuter control, the students will find this instrument to be a very powerful, flexible and easy-to-use tool.

The Honors Scholar Society at Eastern Nazarene College provides students of exceptional ability the opportunity to expand their knowledge and intellectual reach. This organization of silent strength is expanding its horizons under the direction of Dr. Timothy Wooster, Associate Professor of Chemistry at ENC. “An ideal education is not acquired,” says Wooster, “it is created. To that end, the Honors Scholar Program cultivates an attitude of expectation, enrichment and excellence. Honors is not a degree of achievement but a quality of experience.” The Honors Scholar program at Eastern Nazarene College is designed to supplement student academic and ethical development. The program continues the long history of academic excellence at ENC and encourages eligible individuals to participate in activities designed to stretch the mind and strengthen the heart. Alternative and additional courses and activities are offered to students who want to graduate having earned the designation Honors Scholar. In short, Honors Scholars participate in individual and group extra-curricular activities, involve themselves in specialized service projects, and expose themselves to the thoughts of contemporary scholars in various fields of knowledge. The program strives to challenge academically outstanding students without developing an elitist atmosphere of isolation and privilege within Eastern Nazarene College ’s Christian community. All ENC students who meet the program requirements are welcome to participate. Because of the program’s emphasis upon intelligence and character, however, Honors Scholars are expected to exercise greater initiative in scholarship and pursue consistently the disciplines and virtues associated with character excellence.

1. Lowell H. Hall and L. Mark Hall, “QSAR Modeling Based on Structure-Information for Properties of Interest in Human Health”, SAR QSAR in Environmental Res., 16, 13-41 (2005).
2. Joseph R. Votano, Marc Parham, Lowell H. Hall, Lemont B. Kier, Scott Oloff, Alex Tropsha, Qian Xie and Weida Tong, “Three New Consensus QSAR Models for the Prediction of Ames Genotoxicity”, Mutagenesis, 19, 365-378 (2004).
3. Joseph R. Votano, Marc E. Parham, Lowell H. Hall, Lemont B. Kier and L. Mark Hall, “Prediction of Aqueous Solubility Based on Large Datasets using Several QSPR Models Utilizing Topological Structure Representation”, Chem. & Biodiversity, 1, 1829-1841 (2004).

Hall was invited to make a presentation at the “Frontiers of Science Conference on Computer Aided Drug Design”. Dr. Peter Jurs (Penn State University, Department of Chemistry), chairman of the conference, asked Hall to speak about his research over the past decade, with specific emphasis on his development of the electrotopological state. Hall’s presentation dealt with two approaches to drug design, mechanism-based methods and the structure-information methods pioneered by Hall and his research associate Dr. Lemont B. Kier (Virginia Commonwealth University, School of Pharmacy).

Hall outlined several problems with the mechanism-based approach and then gave an overview of the topological method he and Kier have developed. His presentation concluded with a summary of many applications of the E-State methodology, including the recent development of a model for the estimation of human carcinogenic potential, based on Food and Drug Administration data. Scientists at the FDA actually carried out the test of the model, which gave the best results of any modeling approach tested so far, and it is being marketed by MDL Information Systems.

Lowell Hall has been involved in the formation of a new scientific group in Boston, called the Boston Area Group for Informatics and Modeling (BAGIM).

 

Hall has also been invited to contribute a chapter to the new book series Comprehensive Medicinal Chemistry, “The Electrotopological State Indices to Assess Molecular Properties.” His coauthors are Dr. Lemont B. Kier and L. Mark Hall.