March 24, 2011
Bryan L. Roth, PhD, a professor in the Division of Medicinal Chemistry and Natural Products, has received the PhRMA Foundation Award in Excellence in Pharmacology/Toxicology.
The annual award honors researchers who received PhRMA Foundation grants early in their careers and then distinguished themselves through outstanding scientific and/or academic achievements. Roth will be presented with the award April 9 at a meeting of the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.
“This award is wonderful for me and for my lab,” says Roth, who is the Michael J. Hooker Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology at the UNC School of Medicine and holds a joint appointment in the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. “Essentially, the PhRMA Foundation makes a bet on young investigators, and no one knows for years whether it was a good bet or not. I am happy I was able to find success and, hopefully, will continue to find it for many years.”
Roth’s work in pharmacology and drug discovery has earned him numerous patents and he has published nearly 300 articles in, among many other publications, Science, Nature, Cell and the New England Journal of Medicine. He has also trained dozens of doctoral and post-doctoral students who have also become leaders in their field.
Much of his research focuses on trying to understand how central nervous system drugs affect the brain’s neurons. The goal is to investigate existing treatments in order to find new treatments and mitigate side effects, particularly for such problems as schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder and eating disorders.
“We really don’t understand how most drugs currently used in brain disorders work,” Roth says. “If we can uncover how they exert their therapeutic actions, we hope to find drugs that are more effective. Additionally, if we can understand the side effects of current drugs, we’ll know what molecular targets we have to avoid in making new drugs so they don’t have the side effects.”
Essentially, Roth’s work identifies both good targets for drug development and bad targets to be avoided. In one application of the technique, Roth’s lab identified potentially safe and effective compounds for treating obesity. Those compounds have been out-licensed to biotech companies for commercial development.
In one of his most important research projects, Roth and his team at UNC, along with scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, developed and validated a computer model that can allow researchers to predict likely side effects before a drug is even put into clinical testing. The method compares the structures of all known drugs for various disease targets to their naturally-occurring binding partners. That comparison has revealed interactions between drugs and their targets that could not be predicted simply by studying their chemical structures.
Latest News
Dean Angela Kashuba receives Carolina Alumni Faculty Service Award
RASP poster presentations capture student research
