Glovebox Workstation for Shared-Use Biomedical Research Facilities

About This Grant

Project Summary/Abstract. At Hawaii Pacific University (HPU) multiple Principal Investigators in the College of Natural and Computational Sciences have focused their research agenda on research questions pertaining to biomedical research and in training undergraduate student researchers in this context. Biomedical research in the College has benefitted from NIH funding, especially through the Hawaii Institutional Development Award Network for Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE). Ongoing work in the College includes isolation, structural characterization, and bioactivity screening of natural products; maintaining libraries of terrestrial and marine plants, invertebrates, and microorganism samples unique to Hawaii; analyzing plastic additives on marine organisms; and conducting fundamental studies on the reactivity of titanium and zirconium—oxygen multiple bonds, which are present in sunscreens, dental restorations and crowns, and biomedical implants. This academic year HPU opened a new 20,000 sq. ft. shared-use teaching and research laboratory in downtown Honolulu. The lab houses communal instruments including an NMR, GCMS, LCMS, and IR spectrometers, UV-vis and fluorescence spectrophotometers, PCR, polarimeter, and patch-clamp electrophysiology setup. Our College’s research in this new shared lab space would greatly benefit from access to a rigorously air- and moisture-free atmosphere for synthesis and/or storage of dry, air-sensitive, and pyrophoric reagents; storage and manipulation of HPU’s natural product extract library; sample preparation for NMR and fluorescence spectroscopy; and for collecting electrochemical measurements. To support these activities, we request a glovebox workstation and nitrogen gas generator. The nitrogen gas generator will be able to purify the house compressed air to 99.9995% nitrogen gas, supplying the glovebox with a dry and inert atmosphere. The glovebox workstation will be equipped with a freezer, cold-well, and electrical posts to meet the diverse research needs of each Principal Investigator’s team of student researchers.