Category: Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry
Liu Receives $1.2M FDA Grant to Modernize Heparin Quality Control
September 26, 2013Heparin is a widely used blood thinner given to patients to prevent blood clots. However, the drug is sometimes its own worst enemy, as some of its components can cause the very thing it is supposed to stop. Jian Liu, PhD, a professor at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, has received a grant to help the Food and Drug Administration sniff out those potentially dangerous components in heparin. Liu says the research could help improve the drug’s safety, which has been a hot-button issue since a contaminated supply of heparin caused more than eighty deaths and hundreds of adverse … Read more
PhD Student O’Leary Receives NIH Award to Help Develop Synthetic Heparin
August 13, 2013Tim O’Leary, a graduate student at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, has received a National Research Service (F31) Award from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, which is part of the National Institutes of Health. The award provides $32,042 per year for three years to support O’Leary’s research, which aims to help develop synthetic versions of the popular anticoagulant heparin. Natural heparin is extracted from animal tissues, a process that creates safety problems such as difficulties with quality control and the lack of a structurally homogeneous product. In 2008, more than eighty people died and hundreds of others … Read more
Jin Receives NIH Grant to Develop Chemical Probes
July 10, 2013Two years ago, Jian Jin, PhD, and a team of researchers created chemical probes that specifically hone in on the enzymes G9a and GLP, two relatively new potential drug targets. Now, Jin has an R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health to take that research to the next level. Jin, an associate professor at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, has received a three-year, $950,000 grant to develop in vivo chemical probes for targeting the two proteins, which affect a wide range of biological functions in humans. The research will build on Jin’s work in 2011, when he led … Read more
Photos: Commencement 2013
May 12, 2013The UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy awarded 153 doctors of pharmacy, 23 PhD’s, and 8 master’s degrees at Commencement on May 11. https://www.flickr.com//photos/uncpharmacy/sets/72157633479944268/show/
School Researchers Discover First-in-Class Chemical Probe
March 7, 2013A team of scientists led by researchers at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy have discovered a first-in-class chemical probe that will give researchers a powerful tool to investigate the function of malignant brain tumor domains in biology and disease. The discovery is discussed in the cover story of the March 2013 issue of Nature Chemical Biology. Lindsey James, PhD, a research assistant professor at the School, is the first author for the article. Stephen Frye, a Fred Eshelman Distinguished Professor at the School and director of the School’s Center for Integrative Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery, is one of … Read more
Fourches Receives Development Award to Find New Cancer Drug Candidates
February 4, 2013Denis Fourches, PhD, a research assistant professor at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, has received a $7,500 Junior Faculty Development Award from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to support his search for small-molecule inhibitors that selectively target p70S6, an enzyme that has been shown to play a critical role in the development of tumor cells. There is a need to identify potent and selective inhibitors of p70S6 for use in biomedical research, Fourches says. He plans to analyze and model all known p70S6 kinase inhibitors with advanced cheminformatics technologies. He will then use the most predictive … Read more
School Spinoff NeuroGate Receives $250,000 Grant
January 8, 2013NeuroGate Therapeutics, a pharmaceutical spinoff company founded by UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy professor Harold Kohn, PhD, has received a $250,000 Small Business Technology Transfer grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Founded in 2011, Neurogate has developed novel, patentable compounds for the treatment of neuropathic pain and epilepsy. Kohn 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, which is the hallmark of signaling in seizures and neuropathic pain. “This grant will permit us to complete our structure-activity relationship … Read more
Roth-Led Team Develops Method to Create Multi-Targeting Drugs
December 13, 2012An international research collaboration led by scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Dundee in Scotland has developed a way to efficiently and effectively make designer drugs that hit multiple protein targets at once. This accomplishment, described in the December 13, 2012, issue of the journal Nature, may prove invaluable for developing drugs to treat many common diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, cancer, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. Such disorders are called complex diseases because each has a number of genetic and non-genetic influences that determine whether someone will develop the disease. … Read more
Roth, Jin Receive NIH Grant to Develop New Schizophrenia Drugs
September 17, 2012Two faculty members at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy are part of a multi-investigator team that has received a five-year, $7.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to create novel drugs for the treatment of schizophrenia and related disorders. Bryan Roth, PhD, MD, a Michael Hooker Distinguished Professor in the UNC School of Medicine and the pharmacy school, is one of the lead investigators on the grant. Jian Jin, PhD, an associate professor and the associate director of medicinal chemistry at the pharmacy school’s Center for Integrative Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery, is the principal investigator for … Read more
Lawrence Lab Uses Light to Create Three-Button Remote for Bioreagents
August 17, 2012Researchers at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy have demonstrated a technique to selectively activate bioreagents such as inhibitors, enzymes, and sensors within a cell using three different wavelengths of light. The team’s findings are published in the June 27 issue of Angewandte Chemie. “Imagine that you have an inhibitor that is inert but can be made active by light,” says David Lawrence, PhD, senior author of the study. “It is slowly taken up by the cell and floats around everywhere. Light allows you to switch that inhibitor on instantaneously. And by focusing the light on one area of the … Read more