 MILWAUKEE SECTION
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October 2009 Meeting - Laura Kiessling
6:00 PM - Social Hour
Dinner:(Prices include tax and gratuity)
For dinner reservations, please call
ABSTRACTBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:Born in 1960 and brought up in Lake Mills, Wisconsin, Laura Kiessling had fun playing with the science kits that she and her younger brothers received as presents. Instead of following the printed instructions, though, they improvised their own projects using the supplied materials ? often with unforeseen results!Enjoying mathematics and science throughout her school career and encouraged by her teachers, she attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison for one year. Despite her relatively unsophisticated small-town background, she found to her surprise that she could excel in university science courses. A trip during spring break to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with a friend whose sister was attending MIT, opened Kiessling?s eyes to an even wider world of science where women were, by the 1970s, better represented in science courses than at Wisconsin. She applied to MIT as a transfer student and was accepted. At MIT Kiessling became excited about organic chemistry, chemistry that deals with the carbon compounds that make up all living beings. From MIT, she progressed to Yale University for her Ph.D., then on to the California Institute of Technology for a postgraduate fellowship, and back to the University of Wisconsin, where she has been a member of the faculty since 1991. In her research Kiessling uses her training as an organic chemist to design and synthesize molecules that mimic various natural molecules that take part in the life and functioning of our bocy?s cells. Tracking what happens when the synthetic molecules enter into, or in some cases block, particular bodily process helps understand these processes at the molecular level. Kiessling investigates all the forms in which proteins occur in our bodies; for example, proteins in combination with chemical groups that carry prosphorus or that have the form of sugars. These last, the glycoproteins, have been a long-term interest of hers. Many life process pedend on cells sticking to each other: for example, immune responses to bacteria, viruses, and other invaders; the spred of cancer from cell to cell; and the clumping of fibers in the brain in Alzheimer?s disease. Such stickingis made possible by protein and sugar molecules that stud the surpace of cells. For example, white blood cells, one of the body?s primary defenders against injury, respond by moving out of the blood stream to the site of injury, but first they must be slowed down by sticking to the walls of blood vessels. This is accomplished by proteins on the surface of the white blood cells that grab glycoproteins on the cells of the walls of blood vessels. But the proteins on the white blood cells (called L-selectins) are also what cause excessive swelling at the site of an injury. Kiessling has designed synthetic glycoproteins that trick the L-selectins into binding to them. Once clumped, the L-selectins naturally drop off cells and can no longer cause swelling. So the white blood cells are able to do their job, but without creating painful swelling. Here, as in much of her research, there are possible applicatiosn for new medicines that might, for example, be effective in treating the rheumatoid arthritis that afflicts so many people young and old.
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| HTML by: Holger Foersterling - holger@uwm.edu - September 24 2009 16:40:07. | ||||||
