Category: Research
Singleton Start Up Inks Deal, Attracts Funding
March 11, 2010A new company founded on the research of associate professor Scott Singleton, PhD, hopes to restore or boost the effectiveness of antibiotics that have been steadily losing ground to increasingly resistant bacteria. Synereca Pharmaceuticals was created to address the growing problem of bacterial resistance to current antibiotics. The company aims to develop orally active drugs that support existing antibiotics by inhibiting the enzyme RecA, Singleton says. RecA is the focus of his work and is a key factor in bacterial DNA repair and in the development and transmission of antibiotic resistance. “It’s astounding the diversity of roles played by RecA,” … Read more
MCNP Graduate Student Receives TraCS Grant
March 2, 2010Jui-Hua Hsieh, a graduate student in the Division of Medicinal Chemistry and Natural Products, has received a $2,000 grant from the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute to fund her project, “Design of Novel Therapeutic Agents against Mer Kinase for Cancer Treatment.” Elevated expression and activity of the enzyme Mer kinase are associated with various types of cancers, and researchers have found very few small-molecules inhibitors against Mer kinase so far, Hsieh says. Hsieh’s project will try to identify novel, potent Mer kinase inhibitors. She will use computer programs to virtually screen large libraries of chemical structures and use … Read more
NIH Funds Grad Student’s Enzymatic Inhibitions
February 25, 2010Sherket Peterson, a graduate student in the Division of Medicinal Chemistry and Natural Products, has received an NIH award worth approximately $100,000 over three years to support her efforts to create an inhibitor for the enzyme heparanase. “In our lab, we study heparin and heparan sulfate, but my project is related to heparanase, which is an enzyme that acts on heparan sulfate,” Peterson says. “This enzyme has been linked to a wide array of cancers.” In cancer and certain other health conditions, heparanase often becomes too abundant or unregulated. In cancer, this enzymatic excess can promote metastasis (the spread of … Read more
Roth McClurg Baseline Study Shows Racial Differences in Medication Use by the Elderly
February 1, 2010New research by Mary Roth McClurg, PharmD, MHS, and colleagues shows that older black patients have more medication-related problems than their white counterparts, and nonadherence (not taking their medicines as directed) is a particular issue for this group. Roth McClurg is an associate professor in the Division of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. Older adults experience a number of medication-related problems, including underuse of needed medications, use of suboptimal drugs, suboptimal dosing, and non-adherence, which not only have negative effects on their health and quality of life, but cost the health care industry billions … Read more
NIAID Grant Launches Kashuba’s Plan for HIV-Prevention Trials
December 18, 2009Development of an AIDS vaccine is struggling. Topical treatments aimed at stopping HIV have made little progress. Angela Kashuba, PharmD, believes that antiretroviral drugs are the best hope for halting the spread of AIDS, especially in the developing world. “I and the scientists I work with believe antiretrovirals are probably the most rational approach for preventing HIV infection,” she says. “We think they are going to be the key for stemming the epidemic of HIV.” Kashuba is an associate professor at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy and director of the Clinical Pharmacology and Analytical Chemistry Core of the UNC … Read more
Roth study points to new uses, unexpected side effects of already-existing drugs
November 4, 2009Scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of California, San Francisco, have developed and experimentally tested a technique to predict new target diseases for existing drugs. The researchers developed a computational method that compares how similar the structures of all known drugs are to the naturally occurring binding partners — known as ligands — of disease targets within the cell. In a study published this week in Nature, the scientists showed that the method predicts potential new uses as well as unexpected side effects of approved drugs. “This approach uncovered interactions between drugs and … Read more
Lee Study: Pruning Protein Decreases Binding Affinity without Changing Structure
October 15, 2009A research team led by Andrew Lee, PhD, has demonstrated that a protein’s function can be changed without modifying its structure, creating a new comprehension of how proteins bind to each other and to drugs. “This is a fundamental change in the way we understand the simple act of binding, which is important not only for biology but for drug development.” says Lee, a professor in the School’s Division of Medicinal Chemistry and Natural Products. “This mechanism has never been seen before in single protein domains whose job it is to simply bind something. It is a nice, clear example … Read more
Graduate Student Schuck Receives TraC$2K Grant
October 12, 2009Bob Schuck, PharmD, a graduate student at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, has received a $2,000 grant from the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute for research looking into the role of an enzyme in the development of cardiovascular disease. The grant will support Schuck’s dissertation research study of the enzyme 5-lipoxygenase (ALOX5). ALOX5 synthesizes fatty molecules called leukotrienes, which promote inflammation. Genetic variation in ALOX5 has been associated with the development of cardiovascular disease, but the reason remains unclear. Schuck’s study will try to determine whether cardiovascular disease patients with a genetic variant in their ALOX5 have … Read more
School Researchers Attract $2 Million in ARRA Stimulus Funding
October 6, 2009Faculty members at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy have been awarded grants totaling more than $2 million from the National Institutes of Health through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, commonly known as the economic stimulus bill or recovery act. At the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, we believe we have a special obligation to our fellow citizens to report on the projects funded with this money. This page will be updated as new projects are funded. Stephen Frye, PhD, “Discovery of Small Molecule MBT Domain Antagonists” Frye received a two-year $873,000 challenge grant to study proteins involved in … Read more
AAPS Honors Pollack with Manuscript Award
October 1, 2009A paper coauthored by Gary Pollack, PhD, has been selected by the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists for the 2009 AAPS Pharmaceutical Research Meritorious Manuscript Award. The paper, “Kinetic Considerations for the Quantitative Assessment of Efflux Activity and Inhibition: Implications for Understanding and Predicting the Effects of Efflux Inhibition,” proposed a new way of analyzing data from experiments that examine how drugs move through the body. “In the old days, we used to believe drugs moved passively through the body, diffusing from areas of high concentration to areas of low concentration,” Pollack says. “Now we know that proteins play an … Read more