Will Hughes, assistant professor of materials science and engineering.

Boise State researchers have received the university’s first grant from the prestigious W.M. Keck Foundation, announced President Bob Kustra today at his annual State of the University Address.

The $1 million, three-year charitable grant will support development of an inexpensive and portable system that could provide early-stage diagnosis through a simple blood test and lead to treatment of hundreds of diseases from cardiovascular to neurological.

Will Hughes, assistant professor of materials science and engineering and principal investigator in the research effort, leads an interdisciplinary team of professors in chemistry, biology and engineering at Boise State as well as collaborators at the Boise Veterans Affairs Medical Center, St. Luke’s Mountain States Tumor and Medical Research Institute (MSTMRI), Idaho IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence and The Wistar Institute in Philadelphia.

“Boise State seeks to conduct biomedical research that pushes the boundaries of discovery with new technologies that could save lives,” Kustra said. “This highly-competitive Keck Foundation grant is a testament to the innovative thinking of our faculty and their pioneering work that could have a profound global impact.”

Cheryl Jorcyk, Bernard Yurke, Will Hughes, Elton Graugnard and Jeunghoon Lee.

The Keck Foundation is known for funding high-risk, high-return projects in science, engineering and medical research. Keck awards fall outside the mission of public funding agencies and support transformative ideas that are investments in the future. Other recent recipients of Keck grants include Arizona State University, UCLA, Boston College, University of Texas, Columbia University, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, and Princeton University.

“Our vision is to fundamentally change early-stage disease diagnosis and treatment on a global scale,” Hughes said. “By using engineered biochemical tools, disease-specific markers could be identified through a portable DNA-based device that is analogous to a disposable pregnancy test. We believe the system could potentially become the gold standard in diagnosing diseases, especially where medical equipment and resources are scarce.”

Hughes, who is an expert in nanoscience and medical applications of DNA nanotechnology, joined Boise State in 2008 and the MSTMRI in 2010. He previously was an assistant professor of materials engineering at the California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and a Center for the Advancement of Scholarship on Engineering Education post-doctoral fellow at the National Academy of Engineering in Washington, D.C. Hughes earned his Ph.D. at the Georgia Institute of Technology and his bachelor’s degree at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

The Boise State research team also features Bernard Yurke, co-principal investigator and research professor of materials science and engineering, who is an internationally-recognized leader in quantum optics and DNA nanotechnology; Cheryl Jorcyk, co-principal investigator and professor of biological sciences, who is a leader in oncology and molecular mechanisms of tumor progressions; Jeunghoon Lee, assistant professor of chemistry, who is an expert in nanomaterial synthesis; and Elton Graugnard, assistant research professor of materials science and engineering, who is both an expert in nanotechnology and the lead experimentalist on the project.

“Our team is passionate about the potenti

al for this research,” said Amy Moll, interim dean of the College of Engineering. “The effort is unique in how it

integrates the biological sciences with physics, chemistry, materials science and computer scienc

e. The support of the Keck Foundation provides a catalyst that will result in tangible benefits to our emerging research community.”

The detection of lung cancer will be the initial research focus, using a series of engineered reactions between synthetic DNA components and cancer-specific micro-RNAs; which are small nucleic acids that function as gene regulators. Relative concentrations of cancer-specific micro-RNAs can either promote or hinder tumor growth. The detection of micro-RNAs of diagnostic significance could fundamentally change the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

Based in Los Angeles, the W.M. Keck Foundation was established in 1954 by the late William Myron Keck, founder of the Superior Oil Company, and is one of the nation’s leading private sponsors of cutting-edge scientific research. The foundation’s grant making is focused primarily on pioneering efforts in the areas of science, engineering and medical research, in addition to undergraduate education and community service projects in Southern California.