Category: Center for Integrative Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery
Pharmacy’s Robert McGinty Named 2017 Searle Scholar
March 31, 2017Robert McGinty, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, has been selected as a 2017 Searle Scholar. He is the first Searle Scholar named at the University of North Carolina in the past 10 years. The Searle Scholars Program named 15 scientists as Searle Scholars for 2017. Recipients are awarded $300,000 in flexible funding to support their work over the next three years. The Searle Scholars Program makes grants to selected universities and research centers to support the independent research of exceptional young faculty in the … Read more
NCI Renews Partnership with UNC to Seek New Cancer Drugs
October 6, 2016The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will pursue treatments for specific cancer targets as a specialized member of the National Cancer Institute’s renewed Experimental Therapeutics, or NExT, program through a contract with Leidos Biomed and its Frederick National Lab in Frederick, Maryland. Because of its unique expertise, UNC has been designated a specialized center in the NCI’s Chemical Biology Consortium, the NExT program’s discovery engine. The university’s team is led by Stephen Frye, Ph.D., Fred Eshelman Distinguished Professor at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy and director of the school’s Center for Integrative Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery. … Read more
New Kinase Inhibitor Effective against Drug-Resistant Leukemia, Preclinical Study Finds
March 21, 2016A novel compound developed at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has shown promise in preclinical studies as a treatment for acute myeloid leukemia, more than doubling median days of survival even in a drug-resistant form of the disease. Researchers at UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Aflac Cancer & Blood Disorders Center in Atlanta, Emory University School of Medicine and other institutions report that the investigational compound MRX-2843 blocked the growth of acute myeloid leukemia cells, led to a significant level of cancer cell death and more than doubled the median days … Read more
Using New Screening Tool, UNC Researchers Identify Potential Treatments for Ewing Sarcoma
March 1, 2016In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have discovered and applied a new screening technique capable of testing thousands of potential drug compounds to see if those compounds can reverse the abnormal DNA unwinding that marks a pediatric bone cancer known as Ewing sarcoma. Ewing sarcoma is a bone and soft tissue cancer that is most common in teens and young adults. In the sarcoma, DNA is unwound abnormally from a condensed, compact state, leaving gaps in the genetic code. With key sections of the code left open, certain genes are turned on … Read more
Jeffrey Aubé Joins Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry
August 3, 2015Jeffrey Aubé, PhD, has traded Kansas blue for Carolina blue and joined the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy as a Fred Eshelman Distinguished Professor in the School’s Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry. “Jeff Aubé is an extraordinarily accomplished scientist with an international reputation for conducting ground-breaking research,” says Dean Bob Blouin, Pharm.D. “He is an outstanding educator, a consensus builder and a charismatic leader in the professional world of the pharmaceutical sciences.” Aubé’s research program in organic chemistry encompasses organic synthesis methodology and natural product total synthesis focusing on alkaloids. One of his group’s signature accomplishments is the … Read more
New Algorithm Increases Success Rate of Drug-Compound Screening
December 15, 2014Scientists developing new drugs increasingly turn to massive online catalogs of prospective compounds to test. The trouble is that very few those chemical contenders even have the potential to be useful because of inaccuracies in the computerized screening process that identified them. Researchers at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy have created SPLIF, a new, freely shared algorithm that greatly improves the chances of finding a chemical compound that actively connects with a disease target. Swing and a Miss The discovery of new medicines usually starts by screening a large collection of chemical compounds against a specific protein target that … Read more
Video: Drug Discovery Center Draws on UNC Bench Science
November 3, 2014UNC News Services and the University Gazette interviewed School faculty member Stephen Frye, PhD, about the work being done at the Center for Integrative Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery in Marsico Hall. Read the Gazette article here. https://youtu.be/TPJHY67rGXc
Eshelman Gives $3 Million to School’s Drug-Discovery Center
September 3, 2014The UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy has received a $3 million gift from philanthropist and pharmaceutical-industry executive Fred Eshelman. Eshelman’s gift will support the work of the School’s Center for Integrative Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery. The center is dedicated to evaluating and developing potential drug targets discovered by UNC faculty. The UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy is one of the nation’s top pharmacy schools. It ranks second in total research funding and has the number-two doctor of pharmacy program in the nation, according to U.S. News & World Report. The CICBDD Researchers at UNC often discover interesting biological systems … Read more
New UNC Research Building Dedicated
March 27, 2014Many of UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy’s research programs have a new, state-of-the-art home as the University dedicated Marsico Hall, the newest building—and one of the largest—on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus on Thursday, March 27. Formerly called the IRB building or the BRIC building, Marsico Hall will house basic and translational research across several disciplines and will feature cutting-edge imaging equipment that will fundamentally advance knowledge of cancer and many other complex diseases. More than two dozen pharmacy faculty members are setting up laboratories in Marsico Hall to take advantage of its capabilities and the opportunities for collaboration with their colleagues … Read more
UNC Team Receives NIH Grant for Tuberculosis Research
February 27, 2014Researchers at the UNC School of Medicine and the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy have received a grant from the National Institutes of Health for research aimed at developing novel tuberculosis drugs. The grant will provide more than $417,000 over two years to support a collaboration between principal investigators Miriam Braunstein, PhD, and William Janzen. Braunstein is a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the UNC School of Medicine. Janzen is the director of assay development and compound profiling at the Center for Integrative Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. Tuberculosis … Read more