Janelle Tobias Sanderson, PhD

Research

I was the first graduate student to join the lab of Dr. James Frank at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). My thesis project involved synthesizing and applying light-activatable chemical tools to better understand the role of lipid signaling in pancreatic beta-cells, a key cell type in diabetes.

Papers related to PhD

  • Thesis: Developing optically-cleavable targeted (OCT)-ligands: a chemigenetic approach for studying endocannabinoid signaling in pancreatic islets. Available here.
  • Genetically-targeted photorelease of endocannabinoids enables optical control of GPR55 in pancreatic beta-cells. Janelle M. Tobias, Gabriela Rajic, Alexander E. G. Viray, David Icka-Araki, James A. Frank.; Chem. Sci. 2021; 12 (40): 13506–13512. Available here.
    • Contributions: chemical synthesis and characterization; tissue culture and live cell imaging; data analysis / Matlab code; manuscript preparation; figure preparation.
  • Platform Reagents Enable Synthesis of Ligand-Directed Covalent Probes: Study of Cannabinoid Receptor 2 in Live Cells. Miroslav Kosar, David A. Sykes, Alexander E. G. Viray, Rosa Maria Vitale, Roman C. Sarott, Rudolf L. Ganzoni, David Onion, Janelle M. Tobias, Philipp Leippe, Christoph Ullmer, Elisabeth A. Zirwes, Wolfgang Guba, Uwe Grether, James A. Frank, Dmitry B. Veprintsev, Erick M. Carreira; J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2023; 145 (28): 15094–15108. Available here.
    • Contribution: chemical characterization; data analysis / Matlab code; manuscript editing

Awards

  • Best presentation, European Islet Study Group Meeting, Diabetes Research Connection (2024)
  • Professional Development Scholarship, Women in Science Portland (2022, 2023)
  • N.L. Tartar Trust Fellowship, OHSU (2022)
  • Graduate Student Organization Travel Award, OHSU (2022)
  • Travel Award Science Talk ’22 (2022)
  • Graduate Researcher Fellowship Program, National Science Foundation (2020)
  • Ruth L Kirschstein T32 Program in Enhanced Research Training (PERT) scholar, National Institute of Health (2019)
  • Promising Scholars Award, School of Medicine and Center for Diversity and Inclusion, OHSU (2018)