NEWS

September 2023: Our second immune-suppressing ADC publication entitled “ValCitGlyPro-Dexamethasone Antibody Conjugates Selectively Suppress the Activation of Human Monocytes” was just published in RSC Medicinal Chemistry!  This was one of the first projects undertaken by the Tumey lab, and has been involved many students over the past 6 years.  A particular shout-out to Justin Howe, Siteng Fang, and Kelsey Watts who played critical roles in the development of this linker system.  More work is ongoing to expand the use of this linker and to explore its application to other glucocorticoids.

September 2023: Our publication entitled “Synthesis and Optimization of 1-Substituted Imidazo[4,5-c]quinoline TLR7 Agonists” was just published in ACS Medchem Letters! This work describes our efforts to develop TLR7 agonist payloads with improved properties for ADC delivery.  Congrats to a great team – and especially to Emma DeYoung who led the synthesis efforts!

May 2023: Our entire team was able to attend the PEGS conference in Boston where we made many valuable connections and were able to present a number of posters describing our recent work.  And a couple of our team members were able to get a selfie with a minor celebrity in the ADC community! :->

December 2022: I’m excited to announce that we entered a research collaboration and option agreement with Heidelberg Pharma to develop our TLR agonist ADC platform! We are looking forward to working Andreas Pahl, George Octavian Badescu and the rest of the Heidelberg team to push this technology forward. We believe that there are exciting potential synergies between our TLR platform and Heidelberg’s clinical-stage ATAC technology!

October 2022: Our first immune-suppressing ADC paper was published in Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry Letters. “Evaluation of an ester-linked immunosuppressive payload: A case study in understanding the stability and cleavability of ester-containing ADC linkers” We anticipate that this will be a growing area of our work in the coming years.

September 2022: Siteng Fang presented an update of our TLR7 agonist ADC work at the Northeast Regional ACS meeting!

July 2022: Our TLR7 ADC paper was just published in Molecular Pharmaceutics! Congratulations in particular to Siteng Fang who led these efforts over the past year.

May 2022: Congratulations to lab members Justin Howe, Caleb Manheim, Katherine Leong, and JP Maher who all graduated this spring!

May 2022: Congratulations to Justin Howe who successfully defended his honors thesis entitled “GlyPro as a Self-Immolative Spacer for the Release of Payloads from Antibody-Drug Conjugates”!  Justin will be attending medical school this fall – and we all will miss him!

February 2022: We are excited to report that our recent NIH grant application entitled “Legumain to the rescue: A new ADC linker strategy to address the limitations of cathepsin cleavage” was funded!  This 4-year R01 grant (~$1.2 million total) will fund a collaborative project between our lab and Dr. Tracy Brooks in which we will be optimizing and evaluating ADCs that employ asparagine-containing linkers that are cleaved by lysosomal legumain.

January 2022: This semester we are welcoming several new students into our lab, including Victor Ojo, Steven McKay, and Karina Zielinski!

July 2021: We are very excited to report that we have received notice-of-awards for two NIH grants this month! First, an R01 from the NIGMS entitled “Exploiting the hydrophobic glycosyl pocket of IgG1 for imaging and drug delivery applications” (~$1.2 million) and second, an R03 from the NIAID entitled “Molecular whack-a-mole: Targeting Transmembrane-TNFα for the Delivery of Anti-Inflammatory Drugs” (~$160k). Please contact us if you are interested in joining our team!

May 2021: Today we say “farewell” to three amazing students: Jared Miller, Brittany Brems, and Caitlin Vitro have spent the last 2-3 years in our research lab and have grown into phenomenal scientists. They will be each be entering PhD programs this fall at opposite corners of the country: Scripps, Northeastern, and UNC Chapel Hill, respectively. I have no doubt they will be enormously successful. But we will miss them! Congratulations and best of luck!

March 2021: Our work on legumain-cleavable ADC linkers was just published in Bioconjugate Chemistry! Congrats in particular to Jared Miller, the first author, who did a lot of the heavy-lifting for this paper as an undergrad in my lab. He will be joining Scripps Research Institute this fall! And a special “thank you” to Takeda Pharmaceuticals who funded the majority of this work! https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.bioconjchem.1c00124

January 2021: Welcome to two new undergraduate members of our team: Emma Deyoung and Daniel Wheeler!

July 2020: We are excited to have just purchased a new Waters triple quadrupole mass spectrometer! This instrument will be invaluable for studying ADC metabolism and catabolism.

June 2020: The Tumey lab has received a 3-year $450,000 NIH grant in collaboration with Dr. Tracy Brooks (PI) to develop antibody-DNA conjugates for the treatment of non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Specifically, we are focusing on delivery of a short interfering DNA that blocks the expression of the oncogene MYC.

April 2020: Our Angewandte Chemie paper entitled “Expanding the Versatility of Microbial Transglutaminase Using α‐Effect Nucleophiles as Noncanonical Substrates” was just accepted for publication! This paper describes the use of hydrazines, hydrazides, and hydroxylamines as transglutaminase substrates. Congratulations in particular to Tak Ian Choi as the first author on this paper!

February 2020: We are excited to have just received a funding notification for our recent R15 grant application! The NIH award is a 3-year $450,480 grant from the NIAID entitled “Cell-specific blockage of TLR activation: A new strategy for addressing inflammatory disorders.” The goal of this project is to develop targeted therapeutics that selectively inhibit the innate immune response through inhibition of a key enzyme in the TLR signaling pathway.

January 2020: Welcome to two new members of our group, Justin Howe and Katherine Leong. Both Justin and Katherine are sophomore chemistry students at BU.

December 2019: Five abstracts from our group were recently accepted for the upcoming national meeting of the American Chemical Society in Philadelphia! (link)