Steven D. Townsend

Last updated
Steven D. Townsend
Born
Detroit
Alma mater Vanderbilt University
Oakland University
Martin Luther King High School
Scientific career
Institutions Vanderbilt University
Thesis Studies Toward the Total Synthesis of Bielschowskysin  (2010)
Doctoral advisor Gary A. Sulikowski

Steven D'Wayne Townsend is a professor of organic chemistry at Vanderbilt University. He investigates the chemistry of human breast milk. In 2019 Townsend was selected as one of Chemical & Engineering News Talented 12.

Contents

Early life and education

Steve Townsend was born in Detroit in 1983. He graduated from Martin Luther King High School in 2001 before starting an undergraduate degree in chemistry at Oakland University. At Oakland he was a Keeper of the Dream scholar and worked with Amanda Bryant-Friedrich, a toxicologist. He completed his bachelor's degree in 2005 and was awarded the American Chemical Society Outstanding Graduating Senior Award and the Alfred G Wilson Founders Medal - an award that recognizes a senior who has given significant contributions as a scholar, a leader, and a responsible citizen of the institution. In 2005, he matriculated to Vanderbilt University, joining the laboratory of Gary Sulikowski. He was supported by predoctoral fellowships from the United Negro College Fund and Pfizer. [1] After completing his doctoral education at Vanderbilt, he completed a postdoctoral research fellowship with Samuel J. Danishefsky at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Columbia University. He is an initiated member of Phi Beta Sigma, a predominantly African American Fraternity founded in 1914.

Research and career

Steve joined Columbia University as a postdoctoral scholar, working in the laboratory of Samuel Danishefsky. Whilst living in New York he noticed that in wealthy neighbourhoods there were adverts for breastfeeding, whilst in poor neighbourhoods there were adverts for formula. He became interested in women's health disparities and the science of human breast milk. He started to investigate milk sugars (Human Milk Oligosaccharides, HMOs) and identified that they help infants fight disease. [2] [3] HMOs are prebiotics and help to promote colonisation of the intestine with good bacteria. [4] [5] Townsend was the first to show that HMOs prevent the formation of group B streptococcus and that they can even exert antimicrobial activity. [6] [7] He was awarded the Ruth A. Lawrence Investigator Award for his work in human milk science.

Since Townsend's observation that oligosaccharides were crucial for antibacterial defence and to support infection-fighting proteins the oligosaccharide 2′-fucosyllactose has been included in a number of products. [8] Townsend went on to show that whilst 2′-fucosyllactose is in the breast milk of the majority of white women, black and Latina women do not necessarily produce the sugar. Townsend is investigating how the balance of HMOs impacts an infant's microbiome. [9]

Townsend was appointed an independent researcher at Vanderbilt University in 2014. He was awarded the Chancellor's Research Award in 2018 and made a Dean's Faculty Fellow in 2019.

Awards and honours

Related Research Articles

An oligosaccharide is a saccharide polymer containing a small number of monosaccharides. Oligosaccharides can have many functions including cell recognition and cell adhesion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kendall Houk</span> American chemist

Kendall Newcomb Houk is a Distinguished Research Professor in Organic Chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research group studies organic, organometallic, and biological reactions using the tools of computational chemistry. This work involves quantum mechanical calculations, often with density functional theory, and molecular dynamics, either quantum dynamics for small systems or force fields such as AMBER, for solution and protein simulations.

Tobin Jay Marks is an inorganic chemistry Professor, the Vladimir N. Ipatieff Professor of Catalytic Chemistry, Professor of Material Science and Engineering, Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, and Professor of Applied Physics at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Among the themes of his research are synthetic organo-f-element and early-transition metal organometallic chemistry, polymer chemistry, materials chemistry, homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis, molecule-based photonic materials, superconductivity, metal-organic chemical vapor deposition, and biological aspects of transition metal chemistry.

Eric N. Jacobsen is the Sheldon Emery Professor of Chemistry and former chair of the department of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University. He is a prominent figure in the field of organic chemistry and is best known for the development of the Jacobsen epoxidation and other work in selective catalysis.

The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation is a New York City-based foundation founded in 1946 by chemist and investor Camille Dreyfus in honour of his brother, Henry Dreyfus. The two men invented the acetate yarn Celanese, and Henry Dreyfus was founder and chairman of British Celanese, parent of the Celanese Corporation of America. Following Camille's death in 1956, his wife, the opera singer Jean Tennyson, served as the foundation's president until her death in 1991.

Alanna Schepartz is an American professor and scientist. She is currently the T.Z. and Irmgard Chu Distinguished Chair in Chemistry at University of California, Berkeley. She was formerly the Sterling Professor of Chemistry at Yale University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peidong Yang</span> American chemist

Peidong Yang is a Chinese–American chemist, material scientist, and businessman. He is currently a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a Professor of Chemistry and a Professor of Materials Science. His research group studies the synthesis of nanomaterials and their electronic and optical properties. He is also a Department Head at the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis, Senior Faculty Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Deputy Director of the Center of Integrated Nanomechanical Systems (COINS). He is an associate editor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, an American Chemical Society Journal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Younan Xia</span> Chinese-American nanomedicine researcher

Younan Xia is a Chinese-American chemist, materials scientist, and bioengineer. He is the Brock Family Chair and Georgia Research Alliance (GRA) Eminent Scholar in Nanomedicine in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, with joint appointments in the School of Chemistry & Biochemistry, the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, and Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering & Bioscience at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Heather Cecile Allen is a research chemist, who leads the Allen Group at Ohio State University. Allen's research focuses on interfacial phenomena, particularly those involving water and air. Her work has broad application ranging from medicine to climate change. She also develops nonlinear optical spectroscopy and microscopy instruments for the examination of interfacial surfaces.

Human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs), also known as human milk glycans, are short polymers of simple sugars that can be found in high concentrations in human breast milk. Human milk oligosaccharides promote the development of the immune system, can reduce the risk of pathogen infections and improve brain development and cognition. The HMO profile of human breast milk shapes the gut microbiota of the infant by selectively stimulating bifidobacteria and other bacteria.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hai-Lung Dai</span> Taiwanese physical chemist

Hai-Lung Dai is a Taiwanese-born American physical chemist and university administrator. He currently is the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Chemistry and Vice President for International Affairs at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States.

Tehshik Peter Yoon is a Canadian-born chemist who studies the new reaction methods for organic synthesis with the use of catalysis. Yoon currently is a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the chemistry department. For his contributions to science, he has received numerous awards including the Beckman Young Investigator Award and National Science Foundation CAREER Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Human milk microbiome</span> Community of microorganisms in human milk

The human milk microbiota, also known as human milk probiotics (HMP), encompasses the microbiota–the community of microorganisms–present within the human mammary glands and breast milk. Contrary to the traditional belief that human breast milk is sterile, advancements in both microbial culture and culture-independent methods have confirmed that human milk harbors diverse communities of bacteria. These communities are distinct in composition from other microbial populations found within the human body which constitute the human microbiome.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gregory A. Voth</span> American chemist

Gregory A. Voth is a theoretical chemist and Haig P. Papazian Distinguished Service Professor of Chemistry at the University of Chicago. He is also a professor of the James Franck Institute and the Institute for Biophysical Dynamics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brandi Cossairt</span> American chemist (b. 1984)

Brandi Michelle Cossairt is an American chemist specializing in synthetic inorganic and materials chemistry. She is the Lloyd E. and Florence M. West Endowed Professor of Chemistry at University of Washington.

Julia Ann Kalow is an assistant professor of chemistry at Northwestern University. She is primarily a synthetic chemist, who works on polymers, photochemistry and tissue engineering. She is interested in synthetic strategies that can turn molecular structure and chemical reactivity into macroscopic properties. She has been awarded the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, Thieme Award and was selected by the University of Chicago as a Rising Star in Chemistry.

Ramesh Jasti is a professor of organic chemistry at the University of Oregon. He was the first person to synthesize the elusive cycloparaphenylene in 2008 during post doctoral work in the laboratory of Professor Carolyn Bertozzi. He started his laboratory at Boston University where he was the recipient of the NSF CAREER award. His early lab repeatedly broke the record for the synthesis of the smallest cycloparaphenylene known. In 2014, he moved his laboratory to the University of Oregon where he expanded his focus to apply the molecules he discovered in the areas of organic materials, mechanically interlocked molecules, and biology. He is the Associate Director of the Materials Science Institute at the University of Oregon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John A. Gladysz</span>

John A. Gladysz, an organometallic chemist, is a Distinguished Professor and holds the Dow Chair in Chemical Invention at Texas A&M University. Professor Gladysz is a native of the Kalamazoo, Michigan area. He obtained his B.S. degree from the University of Michigan (1971) and his Ph.D. degree from Stanford University (1974). He subsequently held faculty positions at UCLA (1974-1982) and the University of Utah (1982-1998). He then accepted the Chair of Organic Chemistry at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany. In 2008, he returned to North America as a distinguished professor and holder of the Dow Chair in Chemical Invention at Texas A&M University.

Lacto-<i>N</i>-tetraose Chemical compound

Lacto-N-tetraose is a complex sugar found in human milk. It is one of the few characterized human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) and is enzymatically synthesized from the substrate lactose. It is biologically relevant in the early development of the infant gut flora.

Song Lin is a Chinese-American organic electrochemist who is an associate professor at Cornell University. His research involves the development of new synthetic organic methodologies that utilize electrochemistry to forge new chemical bonds. He is an Associate Editor of the journal Organic Letters, and serves on the Early Career Advisory Board of Chemistry - A European Journal. He was named by Chemical & Engineering News as one of their Trailblazers of 2022, a feature highlighting LGBTQ+ chemists in academia.

References

  1. ↑ "38 Students Receive Prestigious UNCF/Merck Science Initiative Award – Press Releases on CSRwire.com". www.csrwire.com. Archived from the original on 2019-09-27. Retrieved 2019-09-27.
  2. ↑ Craft, Kelly M.; Gaddy, Jennifer A.; Townsend, Steven D. (2018-08-02). "Human Milk Oligosaccharides (HMOs) Sensitize Group B Streptococcus to Clindamycin, Erythromycin, Gentamicin, and Minocycline on a Strain Specific Basis". ACS Chemical Biology. 13 (8): 2020–2026. doi:10.1021/acschembio.8b00661. ISSN   1554-8929. PMID   30071726. S2CID   206528243.
  3. ↑ "Synthesizing mothers' milk". Chemical & Engineering News. Archived from the original on 2019-09-27. Retrieved 2019-09-27.
  4. ↑ Breastmilk Sugars Found to Fight Bacteria, 20 August 2017, archived from the original on 2019-09-28, retrieved 2019-09-27
  5. ↑ "Sugars in Human Breast Milk Act as Antibacterial Agents". HowStuffWorks. 2017-08-28. Archived from the original on 2019-09-27. Retrieved 2019-09-27.
  6. ↑ "Sugars in some breast milk could help protect babies from group B strep". American Chemical Society. Archived from the original on 2019-09-27. Retrieved 2019-09-27.
  7. ↑ asd, qwe. "Steven D. Townsend". www.goldlearning.com. Archived from the original on 2019-09-27. Retrieved 2019-09-27.
  8. 1 2 "NSF Award Search: Award#1847804 - CAREER: Bioorganic Investigation of Human Milk Oligosaccharide Modulation of Group B Streptococcus". www.nsf.gov. Retrieved 2019-09-27.
  9. 1 2 "Steven D. Townsend". Chemical & Engineering News. Archived from the original on 2019-09-27. Retrieved 2019-09-27.
  10. ↑ "Wilson". OU-News-Page. Retrieved 2019-09-27.
  11. ↑ "Ruth A. Lawrence Investigator Award - ICHMSI". humanmilkscience.org. Archived from the original on 2019-09-27. Retrieved 2019-09-27.
  12. ↑ "Faculty and Graduate Student Awards". College of Arts and Science. Archived from the original on 2019-03-29. Retrieved 2019-09-27.
  13. ↑ "Chancellor's Award for Research".
  14. ↑ "ACS Infectious Diseases Young Investigator Award Winners Announced". ACS Axial. 2019-04-24. Archived from the original on 2019-05-17. Retrieved 2019-09-27.
  15. ↑ "2020 Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Awards". Dreyfus Foundation. 2020-04-27. Retrieved 2021-06-10.
  16. ↑ "2021 Fellows | Alfred P. Sloan Foundation".
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.