Biomedical Graduate Student Jithesh Veetil Wins El-Lilly Graduate Symposium Award

The graduate research work of Jithesh V. Veetil from professor Kaiming Ye's lab at the University of Arkansas has won the El-Lilly Company Graduate Symposium Award, and Jithesh was selected as speaker during the Notational Biotechnology Conference organized by American association of Pharmaceutical Scientists.

The award included a $500 travel fellowship, certificate, plaque and free registration for the conference.

Veetil's research focused on developing novel non-invasive and minimally invasive glucose monitoring technology. The alarming situation of diabetes has warranted innovations in glucose monitoring technologies for blood as well as other body fluids. Finger-prick blood tests are not ideal for continuous monitoring of glucose in diabetic care and the field of implantable glucose sensors is still at infancy.

The technology developed in Ye's lab holds promise for developing implantable glucose sensors that can be integrated with closed-loop insulin delivery systems. The platform of detection was also demonstrated for its suitability in visualizing intracellular glucose concentration in living cells in real time, which will benefit the researchers in elucidating the glucose consumption mechanism of the cells further. This will offer extensive insights to dramatically improve the rationale for diabetes therapy-including novel drug-screening and drug-delivery and to advance the study of the development of diabetes-associated complications.