Welcome to the Balunas Lab Homepage!
The Balunas Lab focuses on selectivity and specificity of drug action, using marine natural products chemistry to address critical questions within the broader field of chemical biology. Parasitic organisms, infectious microbes, and cancer cells all exhibit numerous biological attributes that are considerably different from those of human host or normal cells. These differences can lead to exciting new targets for discovery of therapeutic agents directed specifically towards these disease-causing organisms/cells.
- Drug Discovery: tunicate-associated and psychrophilic marine bacteria, selective anti-parasitic and targeted anti-cancer agents, and medicinal chemistry modifications of isolates (read more)
- Chemical Ecology: elicitation of silent biosynthetic pathways, microbes in invasive and native tunicates, climate change and microbial populations, and chemical profiles along ecological gradients (read more)
06/09/11 The PASI Advanced Tunicate Biology Course begins - everything you'd ever want to know about tunicates!
05/21/11 In New Orleans for the American Society for Microbiology meeting!
05/12/11 To Panama for the ICBG Annual Meeting!
05/07/11 Balunas Lab group collection trip and BBQ at Avery Point!
04/13/11 Marcy goes to Seattle to give a seminar
04/05/11 The Balunas Lab has received funding from the ASP Research Starter Grant!
03/05/11 Another collection trip to Panama!
02/11/11 Collection trip to Panama with Ann-Chee!
02/06/11 The Balunas Lab arrives on Twitter! Follow us @BalunasLab!
02/02/11 Lyubina Yankova joins the lab
01/18/11 Samie Ahmed joins the lab for his Honor's thesis project
01/18/11 Kristin Kipp joins the lab
01/02/11 Research trip to Panama!
12/20/10 Marcy named a Research Associate with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
10/22/10 UConn High-Throughput Screening Center receives funding from the UConn Major Research Equipment Competition (PI, Kyle Hadden, Co-PIs Marcy Balunas, Dennis Wright, Gabe Fenteany, Mark Peczuh)
09/15/10 Ann-Chee Cheng joins the lab as microbiology research assistant
08/17/10 Balunas lab publishes first paper! See Planta Medica, 2010, 76, 1087-1093.