July 26, 2012
The UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy has named Stephen Frye, PhD, as the recipient of a $1 million Eshelman Distinguished Professorship.
Frye is the director of the School’s Center for Integrative Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery, a research group bringing dedicated medicinal chemistry expertise to bear on biological targets of therapeutic relevance that are under investigation by UNC faculty. CIBDD project teams work with other groups on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus to move potential drug targets through the drug discovery and development process.
“The Eshelman professorships support outstanding scholars and researchers like Dr. Frye who are working at the forefront of the pharmaceutical sciences,” says Bob Blouin, PharmD, dean of the School and Vaughn and Nancy Bryson Distinguished Professor. “This award is well-deserved recognition of the impressive contribution he has made to the School, the University, and to the advancement of cancer research here at Carolina.”
The Fred Eshelman Fund for Distinguished Professors was created in 2003 by Fred Eshelman, PharmD, and is held as an endowment by the Pharmacy Foundation of North Carolina. Other holders of $1 million Eshelman Distinguished Professorships are Leaf Huang, PhD; Mike Jay, PhD; David Lawrence, PhD; Howard McLeod, PharmD; and Xiao Xiao, PhD. The professorship provides $50,000 a year to support a faculty member’s research program.
Frye joined the School’s Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry in 2007 after a twenty-year career with GlaxoSmithKline. He is co-inventor of GSK’s Avodart, a drug used to shrink an enlarged prostate gland that is also under study for prevention of prostate cancer. He also established and led the department at GSK’s Research Triangle Park facility that discovered the compounds that became the breast-cancer drug Tykerb and Votrient, a drug used to treat renal cell carcinoma.
In 2008, the NCI designated Frye’s center and UNC’s Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center to be a Comprehensive Chemical Biology Center, and three contracts to advance drug discovery for pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia, glioblastoma, and renal cell carcinoma have been awarded. These contracts are bringing more than $5.5 million to UNC to discover new medicines to treat cancer. Frye has also established a program in the chemical biology of epigenetics supported by an NIH R01 grant.
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