Federal Grant Award Summary

The National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) awarded $455,610 to The Research Foundation for The State University of New York (RF SUNY) at Binghamton under the Biomedical Research and Research Training program (CFDA 93.859) for a two-year project period running from July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2028. This Project Grant funds the development of SHEPRD (Sonic Hedgehog for EV-POI Registry and Dispersal), a novel technology platform designed to direct the packaging of specific proteins and peptides of interest into mammalian extracellular vesicles (EVs) with high efficiency and minimal immunogenic risk.

The primary deliverables under this award include establishing the technical feasibility of SHEPRD as a broadly applicable protein loading system that demonstrates sequence and structure independence across multiple cell lines. Key objectives include validating that EV loading is triggered by a synthetic sterol inducer (2-alpha carboxy cholestanol) in a dose-dependent manner, confirming selectivity against endogenous sterols and structural isomers, and demonstrating rapid and measurable induction kinetics. The research builds on the team's 13 years of experience in Hedgehog protein biochemistry and aims to minimize foreign tag sequences to a single glycine residue, thereby reducing immunogenicity while preserving protein function for future translational biomedical applications.