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A profile of UT Austin chemist and professor Jonathan Sessler is inspiring scientists to share their stories about what drives them in their work.

March is National Nutrition Month, an annual campaign by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics that highlights positive food choices and a healthy lifestyle.

Assistant professor of chemistry Livia Eberlin sat down with The Texas Scientist to discuss her work.

Robed in tie-dye lab coat, graduate student Norah Ashoura meticulously guides her pipette while explaining what Star Wars has to do with the innovative research into cancer treatments coming from the George Georgiou lab group.

Earlier this year, the nation launched what's been called the Cancer Moonshot initiative—a monumental new effort to boost cancer research in pursuit of a cure. In the months leading up to this new initiative—and in the months since—faculty scientists, alumni and students brought many causes for hope to the fight against cancer.

A research team led by scientists at The University of Texas Austin has engineered an enzyme that safely treats prostate and breast cancer in animals and also lengthens the lifespan of models that develop chronic lymphocytic leukemia. The new treatment and results from preclinical trials are described in a paper published in the Nov. 21 issue of Nature Medicine.

For healthy cells to become cancerous cells, they have to lose several systems that regulate healthy function such as cell growth and division and DNA repair. New findings from University of Texas at Austin researchers about how one such regulatory system works could aid in efforts to develop personalized treatments for cancer.

The Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) awarded an Early Translational Research grant to chemist Livia Eberlin, for the development of a new tool to accurately recognize thyroid cancer. The new tool, utilizing a technology called ambient ionization mass spectrometry, looks for patterns in the abundance of metabolites, or end products of biological processes, to rapidly determine whether cancer is present in a sample.

Professor of chemistry Jonathan Sessler has been named the 2016 UT Inventor of the Year for his prodigious work that contributed to groundbreaking new pharmaceuticals to fight cancer and a successful company, sold last year for billions of dollars.