About the Nebraska Lectures
The Office of Research and Innovation partners with the Office of the Chancellor and the Research Council, in collaboration with the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, to sponsor the Nebraska Lectures: the Chancellor’s Distinguished Speaker Series. Typically offered once a semester, the Nebraska Lectures bring together the university community with the greater community in Lincoln and beyond to celebrate the intellectual life of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln by showcasing the faculty’s excellence in research and creative activity.
The topics of these free lectures reflect the diversity of faculty accomplishments in the arts, humanities, social sciences and physical sciences. For more than 10 years, this forum has crossed academic boundaries to build morale and a sense of common identity, allowing some of the great minds on the UNL faculty to share notable discoveries in a non-technical format, fostering a collective passion for education and research, and spurring the imaginations of those who share the need to know more. Read more about how lecturers are selected at the Research Council website.
The Little Particle That Could: Milk Exosomes
Janos Zempleni
Cather Professor of nutrition and health sciences
3:30 p.m., Nov. 12, 2025, Swanson Auditorium, Nebraska Union
Exosomes are tiny, virus-size particles. Cells use exosomes to communicate with each other in the human body. Communication is achieved by loading exosomes with regulatory messages in donor cells and sending the message-loaded exosomes to recipient cells. The Zempleni laboratory has pioneered a new line of discovery by demonstrating that exosomes and their cargo do not originate exclusively in endogenous synthesis but may also be absorbed from milk. This discovery broke the ground for two lines of investigation, which are 1) the importance of milk exosomes in infant nutrition, and 2) the use of milk exosomes for delivering therapeutic cargo to pathological, hard-to-reach tissues. The Nebraska Lecture will illustrate the relevance of milk exosomes for cognitive development and brain health in early stages of life, and the power of milk exosomes for delivering therapeutics to the brain with heretofore unknown specificity and efficacy.
More information about The Little Particle That Could: Milk Exosomes
