Engineering Students Receive Pelotonia Fellowships

Three College of Engineering undergraduate students were awarded Pelotonia Fellowships to continue their cancer treatment research. Jason Carrier, computer science and engineering; Alex Hissong, biomedical engineering; and Kevin Kauffman, chemical engineering, were among the 29 Ohio State students who received fellowships.

Kevin Kaufman’s project, “Antibody Ligation to Pulmonary Polymeric Microparticles for the Treatment of Lung Cancer,” proposes a new way to treat non-small cell lung cancer. Kaufman will research not only using traditional microparticles that deliver chemotherapeutics to the lung, but also ways to target anti-epidermal growth factor receptors that would stop epidermal growth factor receptors (EGFR). EGFR is a protein on the surface of a cell that triggers the spread of cells and is found in abundance in cancer patients. This approach, while studied, has never been implemented and could present patients with a new treatment option.

The Pelotonia Fellowship program is funded by the Pelotonia cycling tour which raises money for cancer research at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute. Last year, Pelotonia raised $4.5 million with $1 million of the proceeds earmarked for fellowship grants for undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral students.