[7] Janda and colleagues then showed that an active vaccine against the orexigenic hormone ghrelin can slow the rate of weight gain, and adiposity, and do this through an entirely metabolic mechanism, as food intake was unchanged.
[8] Another area of medicinal research in which the Janda laboratory has made contributions encompasses techniques to create molecular diversity, uncover active components from complex mixtures and the separation of synthetic targets by phase tagging.
He has published methodologies that allow implementation of what has been termed "encoded combinatorial libraries", providing a means whereby the alternating parallel synthesis of peptides and oligonucleotides can be performed in a routine manner.
The Janda laboratory demonstrated that nornicotine, a constituent of tobacco, can catalyze aldol reactions in water: the only known example of a metabolite capable of serving as a catalyst.
[13] These findings were crucial to his group’s publication on the glycation of the amyloid β-peptide by nornicotine, proposing the hypothesis that there is a fortuitous chemical dynamic between smoking and Alzheimer's disease.
His group has demonstrated that a synthetically prepared cell-surface glycosphingolipid can be utilized as a panning reagent to identify fully human single chain antibodies (scFvs) that are selective for melanoma and breast tumor cells.
[21] The Janda laboratory has also identified a scFv specific for the integrin α3β1 that is internalized by human pancreatic cancer cells;[22] subsequent studies have employed this antibody conjugated with the potent cytotoxic compound duocarmycin SA for the selective delivery of chemotherapeutic agents.