Academics and Research

Doctoral chemistry dissertation earns prestigious prize

Josh Biller’s research on electron paramagnetic resonance earned him the Bruker Thesis Prize from England’s Royal Society of Chemistry. Photo: Wayne Armstrong

Josh Biller’s research on electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) at DU earned him the Bruker Thesis Prize from England’s Royal Society of Chemistry. Photo: Wayne Armstrong

When Joshua Biller, then a clinical chemist at the Mayo Clinic, was deciding where to pursue his doctorate in chemistry, he was intrigued by the biomedical imaging research of Sandra and Gareth Eaton, professors in the University of Denver’s Division of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.

Biller’s research on electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) at DU earned him the Bruker Thesis Prize from England’s Royal Society of Chemistry. The prize is awarded each year for an outstanding dissertation defended in the prior two years in the field of electron spin resonance research. He will travel to London to present his work to the group in April.

Biller’s EPR work focused on developing methods and instrumentation for imaging tumor physiology in real time using special molecules containing unpaired electrons.

“The end goal of the project is monitoring cancer treatment as it happens, as a complement to other clinical imaging modalities,” he says. “EPR imaging could allow quantitative study of the chemistry of the tumor and how it grows or responds to treatment with radiation or drugs. This is a benefit to the cancer researcher.”

EPR also allows researchers to determine the exact position of a tumor in three dimensions, he says, making it possible to tailor a radiation dose to hit just the tumor area and not the surrounding normal tissue.

“Since you would be hitting none — or at least less — of the normal tissue, you could provide a more powerful radiation dose to the tumor,” Biller says. “This would be helpful to doctors because radiation treatments might be more effective, and fewer would be needed.”

Biller recently started work at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, exploring the use of dynamic nuclear polarization to boost the signal of low-field MRI. Low-field MRI is much cheaper to implement, he says, and would offer new diagnostic imaging insight for diseases like prostate cancer. A lower magnetic field also relaxes the requirement for a narrow bore in the MRI machine, which would increase patient comfort and decrease anxiety.

“My confidence of success, with respect to the work I have started at NIST, comes from working closely with the Eatons,” Biller says. “I have adopted their way of systematically approaching and overcoming difficult and ‘impossible’ problems, while at the same time remaining agile and creative when coming up with solutions.”

Biller makes a point to highlight the culture of excellence reflected across all of the chemistry research groups at the University.

“Maybe one of the best-kept secrets at DU is the level of quality, impactful research going on in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry,” he says. “This award is not only a positive reflection on myself and my advisors, but on the excellence of the entire department for providing such an engaging environment for me to do research in.”

 

 

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