Ivan Dmochowski has been named a recipient of a 2012 McKnight Technological Innovations in Neuroscience Award along with his colleague James Eberwine (Perelman School of Medicine). The McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience supports research projects that develop and apply innovative technologies for studying the brain and its diseases.
James Eberwine, PhD, Professor of Pharmacology, and Ivan J. Dmochowski, Associate Professor of Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania, "TIVA-tag Enables True Neuronal Systems Genomics"
While it has been possible for several years to study gene expression in individual cells in laboratory cultures, continuing progress in neurobiology requires the ability to examine genetic function and regulation at the systems level, in intact tissues or living organisms. Drs. Eberwine and Dmochowski are working on a method to isolate RNA from live cells through an approach they have pioneered, called TIVA-tag (for Transcriptome In Vivo Analysis). During the grant period, they plan to tailor the chemistry of TIVA-tag compounds to collect RNA from cells with greater specificity, efficiency and less tissue damage than previously possible. By the end of the grant period they intend to have established the TIVA-tag approach as a viable methodology for systems-level genomics.
For more information see http://www.mcknight.org/neuroscience/awards/technology.aspx.