Masthead

Kenneth H. Cooper, MD, MPH, challenged the medical belief in the 1970s that physical activity harms health. Instead, he proposed that exercise helps prevent health problems. Cooper, the “father of aerobics,” founded The Cooper Institute, a nonprofit partner of Cooper Aerobics in Dallas, Texas. His 50 years of research, captured in the Cooper Center Longitudinal Study, have changed global views on health and fitness.

Laura DeFina, MD, will serve as executive director of the new institute. She and a team of 12 members, several of whom also hold faculty appointments at the Julia Jones Matthews School of Population and Public Health, will continue to focus on research and education in preventive medicine for all ages.

According to reports from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, approximately 40% of students from the lowest income brackets attempt college, compared to nearly 80% from the wealthiest groups. The gap becomes even more pronounced in medical careers. Recent reports show about 75% of medical school applicants come from families in the top two income brackets, while only 5% come from the lowest income group.

Those statistics helped launch the Lubbock chapter of the Health Career Collaborative. This national nonprofit organization exists to support youth from underserved communities to graduate high school, pursue college education and consider careers in health care. The Lubbock chapter serves 40 to 50 high school students annually at Estacado High School in Lubbock, Texas, with the help of more than 70 TTUHSC medical student mentors.

The 3D prints support testing for the safety and efficacy of potential anti-cancer drugs. The passage of the Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act in 2022 spurred the idea for this experimentation, which encourages alternatives to animal testing for drug safety and effectiveness.

Team members predict pharmaceutical companies will quickly adopt this testing strategy in the future because it can be more precise and allows for evaluating effective therapies at earlier stages, potentially saving time and money.

Neopurpose Therapeutics was one of 14 start-up teams selected by the Texas Tech Innovation Hub at Research Park for the 2024 — 2025 Accelerator Cohort — boosting confidence in its strategy.

s a young member of the Navy ROTC growing up in El Paso, Texas, and then attending the University of Texas at Austin (UT), C. Patrick Reynolds, MD, PhD, had a specific career goal: to serve as a nuclear weapons officer aboard a nuclear submarine. In addition to weapons, Reynolds also was interested in biology and biological research, so that became his major.

He enrolled in a course where some of the very first research on how cells control genes was being conducted. Because cells were hard to work with in the 1970s, the course used bacteria as a model, studying how they form spores and how their spore formation affected gene expression. Reynolds became fascinated with that, and thought out of the blue that it would obviously be a way to treat childhood cancer, but he kept it in the back of his mind.

To highlight the importance of pharmacology in developing new cancer drugs, including those for children, the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) recently awarded Min Kang, PharmD, a five-year grant of $3.37 million. She is a pediatrics professor in the School of Medicine.

The grant will support the West Texas Pharmacology Core laboratory located at TTUHSC Lubbock. The pharmacology core was established in 2008 using start-up funds provided to Kang. Since then, the core has supported multiple clinical trial consortia nationwide and translational research projects primarily using individual investigator awards from the National Cancer Institute and CPRIT to the School of Medicine’s Cancer Center investigators.

“Because (a nanoparticle is) larger, it is less likely to leak out and go to other healthy tissues, so it potentially causes fewer side effects,” Ninh (Irene) La-Beck, PharmD, associate professor in the Jerry H. Hodge School of Pharmacy Department of Immunotherapeutics and Biotechnology, says.

In 2023, La-Beck received a five-year, $2.49 million grant from the National Cancer Institute that will allow her to investigate how nanoparticles interact with the immune system and cancer so new drug delivery systems can be developed.

La-Beck says several liposomal chemotherapies are approved to treat cancer, but unfortunately, lipid nanoparticles such as liposomes also interact with the immune system, though their impact on the tumor’s immunologic environment is largely unknown.

“The bottom line is these nanoparticle delivery systems have a huge potential to help improve treatments, but there’s a lot we don’t understand about how they affect the immune system,” La-Beck asserts. “If we don’t figure that out, then we can’t fully exploit their therapeutic potential. That’s basically what the grant is about.”

“Back in 2005, I had an ADN and wanted to bridge over to a BSN, so I applied (to TTUHSC) and was accepted into the program, which took me about a year to complete,” Stephen recounts.

Stephen’s Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) allowed him to build upon his prior work while gaining the knowledge, skills and degree needed to pursue his future goals. Following graduation, Stephen worked as a trauma nurse in Fort Worth, Texas, before combining health care with other pursuits.

Health Professions Graduate: 2006 Physician Assistant Studies, 2003 Clinical Laboratory Science

Now, rural residents are traveling to see her. Cogdell Memorial serves about 10 surrounding counties, and Blackwell recognizes that not everyone has access to a vehicle or can drive. Transportation, she says, is one of the biggest health care challenges facing small communities.

Health Professions Graduate: 2015; Pharmacy Graduate: 2024; Population and Public Health Graduate: 2024

1.

Pharmacy Graduate: 2015

As those relationships grew, so did the extent of her care. Steele also helped patients with concerns outside the clinic, like not having a refrigerator to store insulin or struggling to read mail written in English.

Nursing Graduate: 2016

She joined the medical center as chief nurse — ultimately transitioning into a dual role as chief nursing officer and chief operations officer. Currently, her focus is solely on operations. She credits the development of a strong nursing workforce and relationships with rural partners as cornerstones of her success strategies.

Biomedical Sciences Graduate: 2023

“I wanted to know how you could go from a very simple science to actually making pills that would end up affecting the lives of millions of people,” says Oladejo, a licensed pharmacist in Nigeria. “Rather than just being a person that tends to patients at the late stage of the clinical process, why wouldn’t I try to learn about the basis of these elements and work to develop therapies.”