Tropsha Receives UCRF Innovation Award

Alex Tropsha, PhD, a professor at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, has received an Innovation Award from the University Cancer Research Fund.

The award provides $100,000 over two years to support a project aimed at developing a novel virtual screening workflow to search for novel anti-cancer agents. Tropsha, an expert in computer-assisted drug discovery and the chair of the School’s Division of Medicinal Chemistry and Natural Products, will use information about physicochemical and geometrical features of proteins to establish new computational methodologies that will enable researchers to efficiently and accurately cull very large chemical libraries of potential anti-cancer agents to produce a small set of candidates that can be validated experimentally.

The UCRF was established in 2007. Its Innovation Awards promote groundbreaking cancer research in a wide range of areas.