Category: Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry
UNC Reaches Milestone in Development of Kinase Chemogenomic Set
August 2, 2017The Structural Genomics Consortium at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partnership with the DiscoverX Corporation has reached the halfway point in developing a set of selective and potent inhibitors that will be made freely available to explore the human kinome, a family of more than 500 enzymes. The kinome is made up of enzymes called kinases, and it provides a tremendous opportunity for drug discovery, said David Drewry, Ph.D., a research associate professor at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy and a principal investigator of the SGC-UNC in the School. More than 30 kinase inhibitors have … Read more
Bogart Earns GSK Fellowship for Research into New Antibiotics
July 19, 2017Jon Bogart, Ph.D. candidate in the Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry, was awarded the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy Foundation’s 2017 GlaxoSmithKline Fellowship of $12,000 over one year to support his research into the clinical value of thiopeptides, a class of antibiotics produced by bacteria. Bogart’s adviser is Assistant Professor Albert Bowers, Ph.D. “Thiopeptides are very complex and hard to make in a lab and this is one reason you don’t see them in the clinic,” Bogart said. “We have developed a method that combines the power of enzymes and synthetic chemistry to access these compounds easily and … Read more
Musgrove Receives Outstanding Employee Forum Delegate Award
June 20, 2017Katie Musgrove, executive associate for Kenan Distinguished Professor Kuo-Hsiung Lee, Ph.D., and the Natural Products Research Laboratories, was given the Kay Wijnberg Hovious Outstanding Employee Forum Delegate Award on June 14 after being nominated by her fellow delegates. The award recognizes the work of outstanding forum delegates who go above and beyond the call of duty when performing work on behalf of the forum. There are three winners each year, who are voted on by the other delegates. Ricky Roach, energy utilities technician at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and forum delegate, nominated Musgrove for the award. … Read more
Katelyn Arnold Wins Second USP Fellowship
June 20, 2017Katelyn Arnold, a Ph.D. candidate in the Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, has been awarded a $25,000 predoctoral U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention Global Fellowship for the second year in a row. The fellowship award, which is highly competitive and rarely goes to the same recipient twice, 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 works in the lab of her adviser, McNeill Distinguished Professor Jian Liu, Ph.D., where she focuses on synthetic … Read more
McGinty Awarded 2017 Pew-Stewart Scholarship to Pursue Cancer Research
June 15, 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 Pew-Stewart Scholar for Cancer Research. The scholarship awards $240,000 over a four-year term to early-career scientists whose research may accelerate discovery and advance progress to a cure for cancer. McGinty initially applied to the Pew Scholars Program but was offered the Pew-Stewart Scholarship instead because of the relevancy of his work to cancer treatment. McGinty studies the mechanisms governing epigenetic signaling at the nucleosome and chromatin levels. Nucleosomes are a basic … Read more
Breakthrough Tool Predicts Properties of Theoretical Materials, Finds New Uses for Current Ones
June 6, 2017Scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University have created the first general-purpose method for using machine learning to predict the properties of new metals, ceramics and other crystalline materials and to find new uses for existing materials, a discovery that could save countless hours wasted in the trial-and-error process of creating new and better materials. Researchers led by Olexandr Isayev, Ph.D., and Alexander Tropsha, Ph.D., at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy used data on approximately 60,000 unique materials from the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Inorganic Crystal Structure Database to create a … Read more
PAINS Killer: Popular Drug Screening Tool Has Serious Problems
May 25, 2017PAINS alerts, a widely used screening tool deployed in the early phases of drug discovery to weed out undesirable compounds, are wrong so often they can’t be trusted on its own, according to scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. PAINS — or pan-assay interference compounds —are a prominent source of false positives in the drug-discovery process. PAINS are biologically active compounds that masquerade as potential drug candidates during the initial high volume screening used to search for possible new drugs. PAINS work by disrupting the assay technology used in the screening to report biological activity, but … Read more
Tropsha Joins Scientific Data Editorial Board
May 17, 2017Alex Tropsha, Ph.D., has been named to the editorial board of the Nature journal Scientific Data. Scientific Data is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal for descriptions of scientifically valuable datasets and research that advance the sharing and reuse of scientific data. Nearly 200 expert scientists in the biological, physical, social and earth, environmental and ecological sciences comprise the journal’s editorial board. Tropsha is the K.H. Lee Distinguished Professor and the associate dean for pharmacoinformatics and data science at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. He also holds joint appointments in the UNC Departments of Computer Science and Biomedical Engineering and is … Read more
Super Shortcut Makes Quantum Calculations a Million Times Faster
May 4, 2017For those tired of having to book a supercomputer every time they want to design a new drug molecule, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Florida have created a shortcut that can make the process up to a million times faster. When creating a treatment for a disease, scientists look for biological targets that control specific processes in the body. These targets can be thought of as “locks,” and researchers need to design extremely complex molecular keys to fit these locks. To design a molecular key, scientist need to be able to … Read more
Rachel Bleich Wins UNC Grad School Impact Award
April 21, 2017Rachel Bleich, a graduate student in the pharmaceutical sciences at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, has received a 2017 Horizon Award from the UNC Graduate School for her research into antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The Graduate School’s annual Graduate Education Advancement Board Impact Awards recognize graduate students for contributions they are making to our state. The longstanding GEAB Impact Award recognizes discoveries with a direct impact on our state in the present time. New for 2017, the Horizon Award recognizes discoveries with future potential to benefit North Carolina and beyond. Bleich works in the lab of her adviser, Assistant Professor Albert … Read more