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Owen Fenton in his lab at UNC with six teammates

The human genetic code contains the instructions needed to make a vast array of molecules, each with a role in our body's complex machinery. In total, around 20,000 protein-coding genes are written into the human genome, keeping us alive and making us who we are. To Owen Fenton, a TraCS K12 scholar and an assistant professor of pharmacoengineering and molecular pharmaceutics at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, those 20,000 genes also provide an opportunity for improving people's health.

Fenton's work aims to employ mRNA, a substance used by cells to translate genes into proteins, to treat a variety of diseases—using the fundamental basis of our biology to search for answers to some of the major medical challenges of our time.


Esha Agarwal - TraCS Innovation Support

Esha Agarwal, an undergraduate student at UNC, is using the resources and expertise of Carolina's research community—including connecting with FastTraCS, the medtech incubator at NC TraCS—to take her app, outSMARTPD, to the next level, bringing it one step closer to helping patients navigate life with Parkinson's disease.

Susan Pusek, DRSc

Susan Pusek, DRSc, has three decades of experience in clinical and translational research, training, and administration. As Director of Education at NC TraCS, she develops training programs, seminars, and workshops for biomedical researchers and their teams. She also serves as the liaison for research collaborations among local institutions.

Tessa Andermann

Tessa Andermann, an infectious disease researcher, studies interactions between the gut microbiome and infections in people with immune system deficiencies—and to do some of her research, she needs bacterial samples isolated from immunocompromised patients. Andermann and her colleagues are creating a process to acquire those samples directly from the UNC hospital system.

Morika Williams, DVM, PhD, DACLAM

Pain is a tricky thing to measure. Unlike metrics such as blood pressure, heart rate or even cancer presence—diagnosing pain relies almost entirely on the use of descriptive language. Morika Williams, an assistant professor at the UNC School of Medicine and a former KL2/K12 scholar with NC TraCS, began her career as a veterinarian—but is now studying pain in both animals and humans.


Video screenshot of Dr. Rahima Benhabbour
Watch our new video and learn what’s possible with support from NC TraCS – drones that deliver life-saving equipment, potential mental health treatment based on brain wave therapy, and 3D-printed intravaginal rings to deliver therapeutics are just a few of the possibilities. We’re here to help strengthen and accelerate research at UNC-Chapel Hill and beyond.

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The latest research news from UNC Health Care and the UNC School of Medicine
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