Category: Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry
CBMC’s Bryan Roth Elected to Institute of Medicine
November 11, 2014Bryan Roth, MD, PhD, has been elected to the Institute of Medicine, a prestigious national organization of the top professionals in various fields inside and outside of medicine dedicated to independent analysis and science-based recommendations on important health issues. Roth is a professor in the School’s Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry, the Michael Hooker Distinguished Professor of Protein Therapeutics and Translational Proteomics in the Department of Pharmacology, and a member of the UNC Neuroscience Center and the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. He is a world-renowned scientist best known for creating an innovative scientific method that allows neuroscientists … Read more
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
Bowers Awarded $750,000 Beckman Young Investigator Award
August 14, 2014Albert Bowers, PhD, is the recipient of a 2014 Beckman Young Investigator Award, a four-year, $750,000 award that recognizes the nation’s most innovative young scientists. Bowers is an assistant professor in the Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry. Bowers is one of only seven recipients nationwide selected across all disciplines of science for this prestigious award. He says his goal for this grant is to use the chemistry encoded in bacterial genomes to access to new therapeutics more quickly by genetically manipulating biosynthetic pathways within the bacteria themselves to make new pharmaceutically relevant compounds. The Arnold and Mable Beckman … Read more
CBMC’s Konze Receives ACS Med Chem Predoctoral Fellowship
July 25, 2014Kyle Konze, a graduate student at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, has received the American Chemical Society Medicinal Chemistry Predoctoral Fellowship. The $26,000 award will be given to Konze during the 2014–2015 academic year. The ACS has given this prestigious award annually since 1991. Konze is currently a third-year PhD candidate in the Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry. His graduate research is focused on the discovery and development of small molecule inhibitors of protein lysine methyltransferases. Jian Jin, PhD, is his faculty adviser. Most recently, the Jin Lab developed a chemical probe called UNC0965, which was featured … Read more
Grad Students Kapadia, Claypool Win WVU Research Forum Awards
June 30, 2014Two graduate students won awards for their research at WVU’s pharmacy research forum on June 12–13. MOPH’s Chintan Kapadia placed first in the podium presentations, and CBMC’s Sarah Claypool placed third in the poster presentations. Two UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy graduate students received awards at the inaugural West Virginia University School of Pharmacy Regional Research Forum. About 100 participants from academia and industry attended the two-day conference, which took place on June 12–13. Those in attendance participated in communications workshops, podium and poster presentations, and career panel discussions. Podium and poster presentations were divided into two categories: health outcomes … 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
Liu’s New Synthetic Heparin Offers Safety and Other Advantages
February 23, 2014UNC and Rensselaer scientists have created a synthetic form of low-molecular-weight heparin that is commonly used in surgeries to prevent blood clots. The new heparin is cleared by the liver instead of by the kidneys. The anticoagulant effects of this new heparin can be fully reversed with an existing drug should a patient experience bleeding, The research team was led by Jian Liu, PhD, and Robert Lindhardt, PhD. Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have created a synthetic form of low-molecular-weight heparin that can be reversed if things go wrong and would … Read more
UNC Researchers Receive NIH Grant to Improve Efficacy of Chemotherapy Drugs
January 21, 2014A team led by Cyrus Vaziri, PhD, and William Janzen at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has received a grant from the National Institutes of Health for research that could help make chemotherapy drugs more effective. Vaziri, the lead principal investigator on the grant, is an associate professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine 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. The R01 grant will provide up to $860,000 … Read more
Andrew Lee Promoted to Full Professor
January 13, 2014The UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy has promoted Andrew Lee, PhD, to full professor. A faculty member in the Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry, Lee joined the School in 2001 as an assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor in 2007. He also holds a joint appointment in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the UNC School of Medicine. Lee uses nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to study the role of structural dynamics in protein function for a variety of proteins that play important roles in metabolism and signal transduction. His work is currently supported by two … Read more
Spinoff NeuroGate Receives $25K Award for Anti-Seizure Drug
January 3, 2014NeuroGate Therapeutics, a pharmaceutical spinoff company founded by UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy professor Harold Kohn, PhD, has received a $25,000 Epilepsy Innovation Seal of Excellence Award from the Epilepsy Foundation to support its development of NGT-168, a potential new anti-seizure drug. Founded in 2011, NeuroGate has developed novel, patentable compounds for the treatment of neuropathic pain and epilepsy. Kohn, a Kenan Distinguished Professor in the School’s Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry, says the compounds under development are highly potent in established animal models and have a novel combination of actions on sodium channels that prevent neuronal hyperexcitability, … Read more