“Extraordinarily Creative” BC Researcher Jia Niu Receives Major Award

'Extraordinarily Creative' BC Researcher Jia Niu Receives Major Award

Jia Niu, an assistant professor of chemistry, has received a $2.3 million Director’s New Innovator Award from the National Institutes of Health, the second time this year that Niu’s work has been recognized with a major award. The NIH grant, announced in October, is part of the organization’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research Program, which funds biomedical or behavioral research proposed by “extraordinarily creative scientists.” It supports highly innovative research proposals that have transformative potential but that may struggle in the traditional peer review process because of their inherent risk.

Niu, the first Boston College recipient of a New Innovator Award, said the NIH funding will expand his research agenda into the development of new genomic editing tools that may one day help explain the interplay of genes in a complex gene network and their roles in disease. “I am honored and very grateful for the generous support from NIH through the New Innovator Award, as well as to Boston College and my department for providing me opportunity and encouragement in developing my research program,” he said. “I would also like to thank the postdocs and graduate and undergraduate students in my group whose hard and creative work made this award possible.”

Earlier this year, Niu was one of ten researchers from across the United States to be named a Beckman Foundation Young Investigator, an honor that carries with it a four-year, $600,000 grant to support the chemist’s research into sustainably oriented polymers. He is also the recipient of a Thieme Chemistry Journals Award. —Ed Hayward 

Cancer in the Crosshairs

An international research team led by Professor of Biology Thomas N. Seyfried has found that combining a tumor-fighting drug with the ketogenic diet can help to manage an aggressive form of brain cancer known as glioblastoma. The researchers concluded that the high-fat, low-carb keto diet, paired with the antibiotic DON, can destroy major cells in the cancer, which resists traditional treatment protocols. The diet-drug combination was able to penetrate the blood-brain barrier that shields the brain from both injury and interventions. “It appears from this study and our previous study with another drug, that the restricted ketogenic diet can be considered a novel drug-delivery system for the brain,” Seyfried said. “There is no drug known that can do this.” The results of the study were released in a paper co-authored by a number of researchers, including Seyfried and BC Senior Research Scientist Purna Mukherjee. Next, the team will explore whether the pairing could help patients with other malignant cancers. —E.H.

Immigration Study Funded 

The Lynch School of Education and Human Development recently received a $575,000 award to help fund a study about how public school educators can best interpret and respond to the country’s rapidly changing immigration policies. “The ongoing changes to the immigration system are threatening immigrant-origin students’ socioemotional well-being and exacerbate existing inequalities in many ways,” said Associate Professor Rebecca Lowenhaupt, the principal investigator on the two-year project. Under Lowenhaupt’s leadership, researchers from BC, Harvard, Rutgers, and the University of Washington will partner with six school districts from across the country, working to find ways to support their students. —Phil Gloudemans