2009 CSL Undergraduate Summer Research Stipend Report
Aram Apyan | Evan Estola | Erik Harpstead | Jae Kwan Lee | Ryan McClure | Jesse Reinhardt | Peter Schemmel | Andrew Yates
 | Ryan McClure Hyun-Soon "Joy" Chong SYNTHESIS OF LIGANT FOR POSITRON EMISSION TOMOGRAPHY IMAGING |  |
For the third year, Professor Chong had a CSL Undergraduate Summer Research Stipend winner in her lab—the only faculty member to do so. She and her team specialize in interdisciplinary research to create safe, effective, and targeted therapeutic and imaging drugs for cancer and neurodegenerative diseases, making drugs for antibody-targeted radiation therapy, iron-depletion therapy, and magnetic resonance and positron emission tomography imaging. Last spring, Professor Chong filed an international patent for a series of bimodal macrocyclic synthetic ligands for these techniques.
Ryan is interested in organic chemistry, particularly the medicinal applications of organic chemistry. A student from West Chester, OH, he began working in Professor Chong's lab last winter, preparing and carrying out a synthetic route of precursor molecule for C-NETA, a bifunctional macrocyclic ligand designed for the targeted radiation therapy of cancer; and performing 1H and 13C NMR to determine the structure of compounds. This summer, he made progress in the synthesis of a macrocyclic bifunctional ligant for positron emission tomography imaging of gastrin-releasing peptide receptor expressing tumors.
When Ryan was in fifth grade, he was nominated to take a Saturday morning class called "Fun with Chemistry" at the local high school. From that point on, he said, he knew he wanted to be a scientist. But getting in the lab has been a revelation.
"I learned a ton of things working this summer," he said. "First of all, research is hard. A lot of time and effort go into every single step of a reaction. I also found that even after I had left the lab for the day, I would still be thinking about my research and considering ways I could improve. The research became a 24-hour job."
He will continue the research this school year—and, he said, "hopefully for the rest of my time at IIT"—before going to graduate school to pursue a Ph.D. in organic chemistry.
Download the 2009 Undergraduate Summer Research Stipend report. (1 MB .pdf)
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