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C. Russell Middaugh Ph.D. Takeru and Aya Higuchi Distinguished Professor Email: middaugh@ku.edu Education: B.S., 1973, University of California, Santa Cruz; Ph.D., 1978, Cornell University; Postdoctoral Fellow, 1978, University of Minnesota. Teaching and Research Interests: Proteins, gene therapy, biophysical chemistry, formulation, delivery, vaccines The majority of our research focuses in three areas. The first involves the development of vehicles to deliver polynucleotides for gene therapy. To this end, we are: (a) exploring the use of physical methods such as infrared spectroscopy, circular dichroism, fluorescence, light-scattering, calorimetry and related techniques to characterize viral and nonviral gene delivery complexes, (b) studying the cellular barriers to vehicle transport and (c) preparing novel gene delivery systems. The second area involves studies of proteins that transport across cellular barriers by currently unknown mechanisms. These efforts involve investigations of the structure, stability and membrane activity of a wide variety of proteins of pharmaceutical interest including growth factors and Factor VIII. The other major area of interest is vaccines. We are currently exploring structural aspects of the delivery of both proteins and polynucleotides as vaccines and the use of adjuvants to enhance immunogenicity in these systems. |
