“Furman Professor and Student Develop Chemical Process with Potential to Revolutionize Cancer and Infection Diagnostics”

In a significant scientific breakthrough, Furman Professor of Chemistry Greg Springsteen and Trent Stubbs ’20 have filed two provisional patents for a chemical process that could revolutionize the diagnosis of cancer and bacterial infections. The process produces molecules crucial to metabolic flux analysis, an emerging technology that uses Carbon 13 (13C), an isotope of carbon, to track the growth, metabolism, and movement of cells.

Existing methods for generating these labeled compounds are expensive and inefficient, relying on biological pathways. However, the technique developed by Springsteen and Stubbs can synthetically accomplish the same transformations in a chemistry flask. The resulting molecules are higher in purity and could potentially lower the price of diagnostic agents by an order of magnitude, making a significant impact on research and healthcare.

“Metabolic flux analysis helps us better understand how cells work,” Springsteen explained. “This technology enables us to make these labeled compounds much more efficiently.”

The synthetic methodology replicates a fundamental biological pathway called the citric acid cycle. Its discovery was a by-product of Springsteen’s role as a theme leader for a joint National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA research consortium called the Center for Chemical Evolution. Springsteen and his students have been working for over a decade to discover how inorganic chemical reactions billions of years ago could have turned into a self-sustaining network of metabolic reactions, a central criterion for life.

Over the last five years, Springsteen’s lab at Furman has trained 21 undergraduate researchers, published six research articles, and has been awarded grants totaling more than $1.2 million from the NSF and NASA. Stubbs, recognized as one of five Furman Fellows this academic year, joined the research in 2017 and proved particularly adept at working with the citric acid cycle. Together, they succeeded in getting the cycle to run in a chemical flask all on its own.

“We were studying the origins of metabolism and how metabolism could have initiated from very small molecules that can be found on meteorites and were likely available on primordial earth,” Stubbs said. “We were able to boot up a part of modern biology from these very small building blocks.”

This breakthrough led to the launch of Aconabolics LLC in July of 2018, a company co-owned by Springsteen and Stubbs in partnership with Furman. Aconabolics produces the compounds in a specially constructed lab space on campus, using techniques from the patents that will be owned by Furman. The university has also provided legal counsel to assist with the complex and expensive patent-writing and filing process. The university will receive a percentage of future net sales of the compounds, while Springsteen and Stubbs retain exclusive patent licensing rights.

Springsteen and Stubbs have also received assistance creating an effective pitch to present to potential investors from the Office for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Anthony Herrera, executive director of the Office for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, said, “The biggest thing I love about their story is realizing The Furman Advantage in that they have a faculty member and a student doing the research, taking their research out of the lab, and impacting the world.”

Their patents would be the second and third ever owned by the university. The first is a patent awarded last week to Professor of Physics Bill Baker and Paige Ouzts ’93 for the invention of a device able to measure glucose levels by taking a specialized photo of the eye with sophisticated infrared sensors.