The use of animals in research has been essential for the discovery, development and production of new pharmaceutical products. An animal's response to a drug, however, is not necessarily the same as a human's. The Defense of Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is consequently interested in creating an in vitro microphysiological (MPS) model, based on human tissues, capable of preclinical evaluation of drug and vaccine efficacy, toxicity, and pharmacokinetics. The aim of my research is to characterize and validate the evolving MPSs using real-time global analyses of the fluid system by UPLC-MS. QTOF and QqQ mass spectrometers are used to monitor drug metabolism, and to screen the components of the system metabolome, by exact mass and CID behavior, respectively. Also, with the capabilities of MS/MS it is possible to identify metabolites and assign metabolic pathways via metabolite databases such as METLIN and internet-based protein databases such as SwissProt and NCBInr.

Dinelia earned her B.Sc in chemistry from The University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus. In 2006 she enrolled in the chemistry department of Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, where she became part of Dr. Fred E. Regnier's laboratory and focused her Ph.D. thesis research in the advacement of protein proteolysis relating to proteomics. She joined the Tannenbaum group in September 2012 as a postdoctoral fellow.