uf college of medicine
Two College of Medicine investigators received an award for high-risk, high-reward projects.
By Manny Rea
Representing the creative, outside-the-box thinking done by Thomas H. Maren, two College of Medicine members received the 2025 Thomas H. Maren Research Excellence Award for their innovative biomedical ideas.
Named after Dr. Thomas H. Maren, the first chairman of the department of pharmacology and therapeutics and a devoted scientist and teacher known for his love of science and the humanities, the award promotes exceptional faculty and postdoctoral fellows pursuing high-risk, high-reward research projects. Awards are designed to promote future competitive applications for extramural research grants and career development awards.
Postdoctoral Awardee
Rachel Newsome, Ph.D., a postdoctoral associate in the department of medicine, division of gastroenterology, hepatology and nutrition, receives her award for her research in gut microbiota in cancer immunotherapy response.
Newsome began UF as an undergraduate student in biochemistry interested in the gut microbiome. Under Steven Bruner, Ph.D., a professor in the department of chemistry, she studied how bacteria, specifically E. coli, influence human health. Later, her doctoral research in the lab of Christian Jobin, Ph.D., a professor in the department of medicine, division of gastroenterology, hepatology and nutrition, focused on gut microbiome-cancer interactions, a field with potential to revolutionize cancer treatment.
While analyzing stool samples from non-small cell lung cancer patients undergoing immunotherapy, she discovered a connection: the gut microbiome plays a crucial role in determining treatment response. By transplanting microbiota from responders and non-responders into mice, Newsome demonstrated a correlation between bacterial composition and therapeutic efficacy.
She also identified a key metabolite produced by gut bacteria, Bac-429, which significantly enhanced immune response to immunotherapy through the white blood cells known as T cells that target cancerous growths.
“Patients have these bacteria already in themselves as a metabolite, but if you give it in a direct manner to these T cells, then you can stimulate very potent anti-tumor responses,” Newsome said. “We’re now developing novel derivatives of this natural small molecule for a drug to give to patients.”
Newsome is working with Jobin to co-found Bebi Therapeutics, a company that will hold five patents for her discoveries such as the bacteria responsible for Bac-429 and the spin-off metabolites they’ve designed for enhanced efficacy. These derivatives allow for a drug that is more soluble, more active at lower concentrations, and ultimately safer to administer.
Her Maren award will fund further drug development studies on pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, adsorption, metabolism, excretion and toxicity. She will also continue to improve the drug’s potency and stability with the goal of filing an Investigational New Drug (IND) application, bringing the science to the clinical stage.
“We are just endlessly thankful for the Maren family and the College of Medicine team that put this together,” Newsome said. “There were no other funding mechanisms like this that could have supported this project.”
Faculty Awardee
Adrienn Varga, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the department of neuroscience, receives her award for her project, “Reversing opioid-induced respiratory depression to prevent drug overdose.” Varga, who joined UF in 2017 as a postdoc, explores how central respiratory circuits in the brain control breathing during opioid use as well as neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease.
While a postdoc, she discovered a connection between the locus coeruleus (LC), a nucleus in the brainstem important for wakefulness, and the Kölliker-Fuse (KF) nucleus, a nucleus in the pons that regulates breathing. Her research applies this pathway to opioid overdose, because opioids can turn off the breathing regulatory system in the brain.
But there is a second component to the process that is not well understood: sedation. Opioids can cause decreased brain activity and awareness. Reversing this mechanism and inducing arousal in the brain could be the solution to respiratory depression, which has caused more than 81,000 deaths in the U.S. in 2023.
“With sedation, jumping into something that is completely unknown is a little bit risky,” Varga said. “We might be able to open doors to a higher-level control of breathing. That can be huge in not just this context, but for any other disease or drug.”
Her award will fund experiments that explore the LC-KF pathway using technology such as optogenetics, which can artificially manipulate neurons using light. Also to be tested is whether LC neurons can drive breathing through the KF nucleus during normal breathing conditions as well as during depressed breathing conditions from fentanyl and morphine overdose. Varga’s lab will, additionally, investigate reduced preparations to simplify the neural circuitry and in vivo experiments.
“If we can actually find that the circuit is something that influences breathing and that we can reverse opiate-induced respiratory depression, that can lead to pharmacological interventions,” she said. “I’m very excited.”