Investing in Top Faculty
Professor Jennifer Brodbelt:
An Endowment for Better Health
Everything Jenny Brodbelt does, whether her research, her service to the academic
community, or her personal life, is driven by the goal to improve health. In her
research she develops tools to find the answers to preventing cancer and she finds those
answers. Brodbelt also collaborates with chemists in other fields so that they may test
their potential treatments for cancer. In the academic community, Brodbelt works to
bring new students to the University, strives to make the department and University
a better place for them once they arrive, and helps them to reach success. Personally,
she is an example of preventive care, taking to heart the findings of her research and
putting them into practice.
Research toward Improving Health
The William H. Wade
Endowed Professorship of Chemistry
Professor Brodbelt develops new tools to find anticancer preventions and to collaborate
with synthetic organic chemists in their development of new anticancer drugs. She
The department is immensely pleased to learn that
Professor Jennifer Brodbelt has been awarded
uses innovative adaptations of mass spectrometers to elucidate the chemical structures
the William H. Wade Endowed Professorship
of molecules, such as the structures of proteins, phytochemicals, and DNA/drug
of Chemistry. The Wade endowment will allow
complexes.
Professor Brodbelt the stable and flexible funding
necessary for her continued excellence in research
“One of the research areas in my group involves developing new tools to sequence
and teaching.
biological molecules. A good example of the importance of this relates to the fact that

when people develop cancer, it usually means that some of their cells have mutated
The Professorship is named for Willam H. Wade
who was born on November 3, 1930, in San Antonio,
proteins or proteins that are in greater or lower abundance than normal. It’s important
Texas and died on June 27, 1998. He received a
for us to identify those proteins and determine how they’ve been altered. A tool called
bachelor’s degree from St. Mary’s University in 1951
tandem mass spectrometry is often used to sequence these proteins. It’s an imperfect
and a PhD from The University of Texas at Austin tool so we’ve been developing a new method called photodissociation to sequence
in 1955. Dr. Wade was a research scientist at the
these proteins more effectively. We attach a laser to a mass spectrometer and we can
Radiation Laboratory at the University of California
analyze the proteins or peptide products by irradiating them with the laser. They fall
at Berkeley and then returned to UT-Austin in 1958
as a postdoctoral fellow. In 1961 he became a
apart into pieces and we can put those pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle. It usually
member of the faculty, and was the chairman of the
gives us more information than the traditional mass spectrometry methods alone. This
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry from
is an example where we undertake instrumentation modifications and then apply the
1974 to 1981. Under his leadership the department new tool to solve problems like protein sequence analysis.”
reached first rank, nationally and internationally. Dr.
Wade’s research interests included the chemistry
“Another area of my research is related to phytochemicals. There’s been a lot of
of corrosion and classical surface chemistry. His
attention in the last decade to developing a more proactive approach to preventing
research included more than 180 authored and cancer as opposed to treating cancer after it occurs. A great way to do that is by
coauthored refereed articles. He was a consultant
improving people’s diets. One can very simply do that by increasing the amount of
to Petroferm USA, STATOIL, Affinity Biotech,
fruits and vegetables that are rich sources of natural compounds called phytochemicals.
International Specialty Products, E. I. du Pont,
AKZO Nobel, and CONDEA Vista. He also patented
These compounds are not something your body needs to survive but they have
a spinning drop machine. The proceeds from the
chemopreventive properties. Many of these phytochemicals function as antioxidants.
invention support UT-Austin scholarships. Dr.
A steady intake of fruits and vegetables releases small doses of phytochemicals
Wade was a member of the American Chemical that will circulate in your plasma, scavenge free radicals and prevent some of the
Society, where he served one term as chairman and
damage to your DNA that will lead to cancer. We are using and developing new
twice organized the National Colloid Symposium.
mass spectrometric methods to analyze these compounds in the fruits and vegetables.
With Professor Gary Pope, he created a system to
Then, once you ingest them they are metabolized into compounds that may be far
remove chlorocarbons from a chemical dump site in
Utah. In 1979, he was awarded the Chevalier de
more powerful. Unless we can track these compounds in the body, we don’t really
I’Ordre des Palmes Academiques from the French
know which compound is causing the most important outcome. So we look at the
government for his work with French scientists.
initial compounds in the fruits and vegetables and then the metabolites that show up
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