The Biology department partners with the Small World Initiative (SWI), a research consortium developed at Yale University to provide freshmen Biology majors with an authentic research opportunity that addresses a pressing, global health challenge – the rise of antibiotic resistant pathogens. Through a series of student-driven experiments, students collect soil samples, isolate diverse bacteria, test for antibiotic production against critically relevant micro-organisms, and characterize those that exhibit antibiotic activity. SWI’s approach provides a laboratory platform to crowdsource antibiotic discovery and advances promising candidates into the drug development pipeline.

Biology partners with SEA-PHAGES, to provide an undergraduate research experience funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Phages are viruses that infect and kill bacteria and have been a powerful tool for learning about microbiology. They have also been used as a therapy against antibiotic resistant bacteria. Over the course of two semesters, students isolate, characterize, and identify phages found in soil. Students then use bioinformatics tools to find genes hidden within the DNA of these viruses. Viruses that students discover are housed in a national repository, and genomes that are annotated are published on a national database, with students listed as authors. The SEA-PHAGES program gives students the opportunity to do real research that might one day provide an additional tool in managing infectious disease.

Created in partnership with the Wistar Institute, Life Science Innovation provides students with hands-on science/technology commercialization projects. Cross-listed by the Biology, ISBT and Management & Leaderships programs, interdisciplinary teams of students select technologies from a curated patent portfolio of Wistar inventions. Teams interact with inventor scientists at Wistar to familiarize themselves with the underlying science/technology, as well as with external partners such as venture capitalists, intellectual property lawyers, and biotechnology entrepreneurs—to identify unmet needs the science/technology addresses, and define key commercialization issues such as IP, market opportunity, competition, regulatory pathways, and potential customers. At the end of the semester, teams compete in a “shark-tank” competition and pitch a panel of life science investors.

This course allows ALL students to conduct faculty-mentored research across many disciplines. A sample of current student projects:

• Neuroprotection against Seizure-Related Brain Damage
• Ecological Stoichiometric and Microbial Community Responses to Urbanized Landscapes and Nutrient and Resource Use
• Molecular Mechanisms Influencing the Relationship Between Bacteria and Bacteriophages
• DNA Fingerprinting of herbal samples and trees of the Arboretum on the La Salle University Campus
• Regulation of Cytoskeletal Dynamics in Tumor Progression and Host-Pathogen Interactions