Roth, Jin Receive NIH Grant to Develop New Schizophrenia Drugs

Two 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 one of the projects supported by the grant.

Jin’s lab will receive $1.15 million in direct cost to create clinical candidates for treating schizophrenia and other mental disorders. In 2011, researchers led by Jin and Roth discovered three first-in-class chemical compounds that have an unprecedented mechanism of action. Jin will use the new grant to develop those compounds into clinical candidates, which could ultimately lead to safer, more effective medications for those conditions.

The other lead investigator on the grant is Marc Caron, PhD, the James B. Duke Professor of Cell Biology at the Duke University School of Medicine. The other investigators include William Wetsel, PhD, an associate professor of psychiatry at Duke University; and Doug Johnson, PhD, and Chris Schmidt, PhD, of Pfizer. Schmidt is senior director at Pfizer Global Research and Development, while Johnson is an associate research fellow at Pfizer Worldwide Research and Development.