Freeman Lab

News Archive

NIH Funds New Center for Genomic Regulation

The NIH has awarded a new five year effort, led by Dr. Freeman, to establish a Center for Genomic Regulation at OMRF.  This Center, co-directed by Dr. Gorbsky, will support development and expansion of research into how DNA is copied, stored, and used in cells.  The Center will support four new investigators at OMRF (Drs. Kirkland, Donczew, Finn, and Krishnan) as they establish and expand their labs. The Center will also have research cores in Epigenomics and Artificial Intelligence to the support this work.  Ultimately the goal of the Center to make Oklahoma a hub for biomedical research in this area. 

$3.7 Million Awarded from NIA for Alzheimer’s Research

Dr. Freeman and collaborators at OMRF (Drs. Beckstead, Rice, and Sharpe) have received a new award from the National Institute on Aging. This project is examining the role of the Major Histocompatibility Complex in neuroinflammation with aging and Alzheimer’s. Activation of immune processes in the brain with aging and Alzheimer's may be both an adaptive and deleterious response by the brain to maintain function. These studies over the next five years will examine a variety of modulations of these processes and how they affect cognition, neuroinflammation, and neurodegeneration.  Dr. Freeman was on our local news station KOCO talking about the new grant.

National Research Service Award F30 for Dr. Kellogg

Collyn Kellogg, Ph.D. have received a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA – F30) Fellowship for M.D./Ph.D. training.  His project – ‘Regulation of Microglial Function by Major Histocompatibility Complex I in Aging and Alzheimer's Disease’ will support the completion of his Ph.D. research and M.D. training.  Specifically, his project will examine the hypothesis that the increased expression of Major Histocompatibility Complex-I and their receptors is a mechanism through which microglia can signal cell-autonomously to themselves or cell-non-autonomously to other microglia to induce phenotypic switching to a more reactive phenotype.  This is one of only five F30 fellowships to be awarded in Oklahoma in the past decade.

VA Pilot Award to Study Traumatic Brain Injury

The OKC VAMC has awarded Dr. Kellogg a VA Pilot Project that examines blast traumatic brain injuries. We have developed a shock tube that uses pressurized air to create a pressure shock wave similar to that which may be experienced by service members in combat. Our methods allow us to vary the intensity to investigate the impact of different injury levels. The funds will support the technician, Hannah Ray, working on the project, as well as some of the mouse colony, RNA isolation, and downstream analysis. We will cause different intensities and frequencies of TBI and follow how long the impacts of blast injury are evident through behavioral studies and RNA, specifically focusing on microglia. Our goal is to elucidate the short term and persistent changes in glial cells following blast traumatic brain injury. We hope this project extends the understanding of the pathophysiology of persistent brain damage following traumatic brain injury and opens avenues for novel interventions that can improve the neuronal landscape post-TBI by modulating the microglial response.

New NIH grant to study mechanisms of eye aging

Drs. Chucair-Elliott and Freeman have received a new award from the National Eye Institute. Aging is the principal risk factor for age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a neurodegenerative disease characterized by the irreversible loss of vision. Atrophy of the retinal pigmented epithelium (RPE) layer is an AMD hallmark that precedes photoreceptor cell loss. However, the mechanisms underlying RPE impairment with aging and exacerbation by poor diet are unclear. Epigenetic processes (DNA modifications and chromatin accessibility) in the RPE may play a central mechanistic role in the pathogenesis and progression of AMD. These studies will examined changes in RPE mC/hmC and chromatin accessibility patterns with aging, RPE-specific differential changes in the translatome, and interrogate the potential of Western and ketogenic dietary patterns, in combination with impaired oxidative stress resolution pathways, to exacerbate or ameliorate changes in the RPE epigenome and gene expression profiles.

NIH Early Independence Award for Sarah Ocañas

The NIH Director's Office has announced that Dr. Sarah Ocañas is one of only 14 Early Independence Award winners this year in the US.  This prestigious award allows the most promising trainees to transition directly from graduate school to an independent faculty position https://commonfund.nih.gov/earlyindependence/awardrecipients. Sarah will be joining the Genes & Human Disease Program at OMRF and is the first winner of this award in Oklahoma.

Graduate Student Victor Ansere Wins Award

Victor Ansere in the Freeman Lab has received a National Institute on Aging F99/K00 award. This award mechanism supports promising junior investigators as the finish graduate work and for their post-doc.  https://www.nia.nih.gov/research/training/f99-k00-transition-aging-research-predoctoral-students  Victor is the first trainee at OMRF to receive one of these awards that will support him for up to the next 5 years of his work in plasma transfer and anti-aging therapies.

Research Career Scientist Award

Dr. Freeman received a Research Career Scientist Award from the Veterans Administration.  These awards support the salaries for five years of non-clinician scientists who have demonstrated extraordinary contributions to VA research beyond their own funded studies and programs.

Graduate student Sarah Ocanas wins research award

Sarah Ocañas received the Provost's Award for Outstanding Research at the OUHSC GREAT Symposium. This award comes with a travel award to attend a conference of her choosing.

Impetus Longevity Award For Epigenetics Research

The Freeman Lab, along with colleagues at the OMRF in the Wren lab received a one year grant from the Impetus Longevity funding program.  This grant "Role of age-related cytosine mutations in epigenetic age predictions" is work by student Hunter Porter to examined the contribution of heteroplasmic genomic mutations to epigenomic aging clocks.

Graduate Students Receive Fellowships

Congratulations to Victor Ansere for being awarded an OMRF Pre-doctoral Scholarship endowed by the John and Mildred Carson PhD Scholarship Fund and Kyla Tooley for receiving a fellowship from the Oklahoma GeroScience Training Program though an NIH t32 award at OUHSC.

Sarah Ocanas elected American Aging Association Trainee Vice Chair/Secretary

Sarah Ocanas will be representing the OKC Geroscience community nationally through her election as Vice Chair/Secretary of the Trainee Chapter.  This chapter represents all trainees in the society from across the US.

GREAT Week Awards to Graduate Students

At the 2021 OUHSC Graduate Research Education And Technology (GREAT) Symposium students in the Freeman Lab won a number of awards:
  • Hunter Porter - GREAT Debate Winner
  • Sarah Ocanas - Paper of the Year Award and Dean's Award for Outstanding Research
  • Kyla Tooley - Vice President's for Research Award for Outstanding Research.
Congratulation to Hunter, Sarah, and Kyla for their achievements and to all the trainees in the Geroscience program who won nearly half of all the awards.

Graduate Student Hunter Porter Receives NIH Predoctoral Fellowship

Hunter Porter, neuroscience graduate student, has received an NIH Fellowship entitled "Mathematical Models of Vulnerability and Cell-Type Specific Analysis of DNA Modifications in Aging" to support his research and training.  Hunter's work applies advanced bioinformatic approaches to DNA methylation patterns to understand aging, disease, cellular senescence, and genomic regulation.  Hunter continues a trend of students receiving individual NIH predoctoral fellowships with 1/2 of the F31 awardees in Oklahoma over the past three years being in the Freeman Lab.

New grants to study epigenomics of aging

Two new collaborative projects have been funded to expand our epigenomics of aging studies.  With the laboratory of Dr. Michael Stout at the College of Allied Health at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center a five year project 'Cellular senescence and epigenomic remodeling in ovarian aging" (R01AG069742) will examine theca, granulosa, and oocytes cells across the reproductive lifespan and the impact of senolytic treatments.  With the laboratory of Dr. Ben Miller in the Aging & Metabolism Program at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation a new one year High Priority, Short-Term Project Award 'A novel approach to understand a mechanisms of proteostatic decline with aging' is combining our NuTRAP mouse approaches with stable isotope labeling to understand protein turnover in specific cell types in the brain and muscle. As well, the Oklahoma Nathan Shock Center (P30AG050911) has been renewed for five years and will allow us to continue to provide services to the geroscience research community.

Graduate Student Victor Ansere Receives AFAR Fellowship

Congratulations to Victor Ansere for receiving a Diana Jacobs Kalman/AFAR Scholarship for Research in the Biology of Aging from the American Foundation for Aging Research.  This award will support Victor's research into the effects of heterochronic plasma transfer on brain aging and microglial activation.

Drs. Chucair-Elliott and Freeman receive BrightFocus Vision Grant

A project initiated by Dr. Ana Chucair-Elliott on age-related changes in the retinal epigenome has been funded by the BrightFocus Foundation.  The project "Inducible cell-specific mouse models for paired epigenetic and transcriptomic studies of microglia and Müller glia in age-related macular degeneration" will be examining glial age-related epigenomic alterations in the context of Age-related macular degeneration (AMD). The two year grant award will utilize new mouse models developed in the lab.

Ashley Martin Dissertation Defense

Congratulations to Ashley Martin for artfully completing and defending her Physiology PhD dissertation "MATERNAL ADIPOSITY ALTERS TRANSCRIPTOIMC AND EPIGENOMIC NEURODEVELOPMENTAL LANDSCAPES IN THE FETAL HIPPOCAMPUS."  Ashley has been an F31 awardee from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and will now be headed to a postdoctoral fellowship in medical and health professions education.

Graduate Student Sarah Ocanas Receives NIH Award

Freeman Lab graduate student Sarah Ocanas has received an NIH National Research Service Award for her project "EPIGENETIC REGULATION OF SEXUALLY DIVERGENT NEUROINFLAMMATION WITH BRAIN AGING AND ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE."  This will support Sarah and her work for the next three years.  Sarah joins Ashley Martin in the group as the only F31 awardees in the state of Oklahoma.

Hunter Porter Wins Harold Hamm Diabetes Center Presentation Award

Graduate Student Hunter Porter received a presentation award for his work on non-CpG methylation in metabolic memory and diabetic retinopathy.

NIH Grant Award to Support Brain Aging Research

The Freeman Lab received a new NIH grant award R01AG059430 “Sex divergence and cell specificity of age-related hippocampal DNA modifications” to support studies of glial and neuronal cell population with brain aging through 2024.

Sarah Ocanas wins PHF Graduate Fellowship

Congratulation to Sarah Ocanas for winning a Presbyterian Health Foundation fellowship for her work “Epigenetic regulation of sexually divergent neuroinflammation with brain aging”:

Students win awards at GREAT Week

Sarah Ocanas, Physiology Graduate Student, won the GREAT week Graduate Student Association Research Award

Hunter Porter, Neuroscience Graduate Student, won the GREAT week OK Bioscience Travel Award and the Graduate Student Flash Talk Award

Hunter Porter wins MCBIOS Award

At the 2019 MCBIOS Meeting Hunter Porter, Neuroscience Graduate Student, won the Best Student Oral Presentation Award.

OUHSC Receives Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (CoBRE) Award

Geroscience researchers has received an NIGMS CoBRE award to advance aging research in Oklahoma. This four year >$8 million dollar award will provide research cores, junior investigator awards, and pilot grants to continue the growth of the aging research program. The Freeman Lab will lead the Molecular Analysis and Cellular Imaging Core.

Hunter Porter Awarded NIH Fellowship

Hunter Porter, Neuroscience Graduate Student will be supported by an NIH Pre-doctoral fellowship through the Geroscience Program (T32AG052363 Geroscience Training Program in Oklahoma).

New Grant Awards to Support Neuroepigenomic Research

Two new research grants will support work in the laboratory. An NIH High Priority, Short-Term Project Award from the NIH (R56AG059430 Sex Divergence and Cell Specificity of Age-related Hippocampal DNA Modifications) will support continued development of NuTRAP transgenic mice. A VA MERIT Award (I01BX003906 Dynamics of the Brain Epigenome with Aging) will support our studies of prevention of age-related epigenetic modifications by caloric restriction.

Graduate Student Wins Best Dissertation Award

Dustin Masser Phd, former Physiology graduate student received the 2018 OUHSC Outstanding Dissertation Award.  This is given to one graduate student each year and recognizes a body of work from a gradate student's research.

Hunter Porter Wins MCBIOS2018 Poster Award

Hunter Porter, Neuroscience graduate student, won the Best Poster Award at the Midsouth Computational Biology & Bioinformatics Society meeting held at Mississippi State University for his poster Testing the Limits of the Epigenetic Clock

Graduate Students Present at Keystone DNA and RNA Methylation Meeting in Vancouver

January 2018 - Neuroscience graduate students Niran Hadad and Hunter Porter presented there work at the Keystone DNA and RNA Methylation meeting in Vancouver BC this month.  Niran presented his poster Differential Regulation of CG and non-CG Methylation by Caloric-Restriction in the Old Brain while Hunter's poster was Testing the Limits of the Epigenetic Clock

Freeman Lab Receives Two Oklahoma Center for Adult Stem Cell Research Grants

The Oklahoma Center for Adult Stem Cell Research has awarded to grants for stem cell research in the Freeman Lab.  The first project "Neuroepigenomics of Neural Stem Cell Aging" will continue development of genetic models for analysis of neural stem cells with aging.  The second grant will fund the purchase of a BioRad ddSeq instrument for single cell RNA sequencing studies. Thank you OCASCR!