Category: Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry
K.H. Lee Receives Hong Kong Baptist University Award for Advancing Chinese Medicine
April 22, 2016Kuo-Hsiung Lee, Ph.D., was chosen to receive the Third Cheung On Tak International Award for Outstanding Contribution to Chinese Medicine from Hong Kong Baptist University’s School of Chinese Medicine. Lee is the Kenan Distinguished Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy and director of the Natural Products Research Laboratories in the School’s Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Cheung On Tak Award is given every two years to scientists and scholars with groundbreaking and internationally recognized achievements in advancing the internationalization of Chinese medicine or … 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
Katelyn Arnold Receives USP Global Fellowship
December 4, 2015Katelyn Arnold, a Ph.D. student in the Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, has been awarded a $30,000 predoctoral U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention Global Fellowship. The U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention Global Fellowship program awards aims to advance new research contributing to innovative or updated quality standards for chemical and biological medicines, excipients, dietary supplements, herbal medicines, health-care quality and food ingredients. Arnold graduated in May 2015 with a B.S. in Medicinal Pharmaceutical Chemistry from the University of Dayton. She works in the lab of her adviser, McNeill Distinguished Professor Jian Liu, Ph.D., where she … Read more
UNC Pharmacy Is Newest Member of International Structural Genomics Consortium
September 15, 2015The UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy is the first U.S. hub of a worldwide research network dedicated to defining the structure of proteins and freely sharing its discoveries with the scientific community to drive the development of new therapeutics. UNC joins Oxford University, the University of Toronto, and the State University of Campinas in São Paulo, Brazil, as a core laboratory of the Structural Genomics Consortium, an international, not-for-profit, public-private partnership that carries out basic science in drug discovery and makes its research output available to the scientific community with no strings attached. “The SGC identifies new drug discovery targets … 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
K. H. Lee Receives AACP’s Highest Research Honor
April 17, 2015Kuo-Hsiung Lee, PhD, has been named the winner of the 2015 Ernest H. Volwiler Award, the highest research award from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy. He will be honored during the 2015 AACP annual meeting in National Harbor, Maryland, July 11 to 15. Lee is the Kenan Distinguished Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and director of the Natural Products Research Laboratories in the School’s Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry. He has been a member of the School’s faculty for forty-five years. The award recognizes one researcher annually that has made outstanding lifetime contributions to pharmaceutical and clinical … Read more
Tropsha Appointed Editor of ACS Chemistry Journal
January 26, 2015Alexander Tropsha, PhD, has been appointed associate editor of the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling. Tropsha is the K. H. Lee Distinguished Professor in the Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry and the associate dean for research at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. The ACS Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling publishes papers related to new methodologies or applications in the field of chemical informatics and molecular modeling. It has an impact factor of 4.068, which means that articles published in the journal were cited an average of just over four times over a … Read more
Kabanov Elected to AIMBE College of Fellows
January 26, 2015Alexander Kabanov, PhD, DrSci, has been elected to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering’s College of Fellows, an honor reserved for the top two percent of medical and biological engineers. Kabanov was nominated, reviewed, and elected by peers and members of the College of Fellows for seminal works on polymeric nanosystems for drug delivery that have considerably influenced current ideas and approaches in nanomedicine, according to AIMBE. Kabanov is the Mescal Swaim Ferguson Distinguished Professor in the Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy and director of the School’s Center for Nanotechnology in … 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