Huntsville’s HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology announced on Tuesday that one of their associate companies, CFD Research, partnered with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and Oak Ridge Associated Universities during a two-week course designed to “teach, inspire and involve” high school students in CFD’s antibiotic discovery process.
The results from the students’ research in Maryland were exceptional, as they created a massive drug discovery library of over 150,000 clones from local waterways that have the potential to produce dozens of antibiotic candidates.
“Students were very excited knowing their efforts were going towards active antibiotic discovery research, which could lead to real medical breakthroughs,” CFD Research Scientist Kyle H. Lewter, who taught the high school students, said in a news release. “Their eagerness to follow and understand downstream results was encouraging and opens the door for expansion of the initiative to reach more students while generating more progress towards new antibiotics.”
The students’ research will now be used by CFD Research and the DTRA to advance and develop new antibiotics for combatting biological warfare agents and so-called “Super Bugs” that have become resistant to most modern antibiotics.
The two-week educational program, which took place in Maryland, will also be transitioned into Huntsville-area high schools.
This educational initiative allows students to actively participate in scientific research, provides them with hands-on experience conducting research and encourages them to continue their academic pursuits in a STEM related discipline.
“The program is designed to inspire a future generation of scientists by combining environmental microbiome sample collection, synthetic biology, and a sense of accomplishment that comes from meaningful contribution to research around a critical problem facing the world today,” CFD Senior Research Scientist AJ Singhal said in a press release.
CFD Research is an established research and development (R&D) company and one of the oldest and largest associate companies on the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology Campus in Huntsville. CFD Research was founded in 1987 with the goal of developing and commercializing new technologies for aerospace, biomedical, energy and materials markets.
Sean Ross is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn
