Scientific Advisory Board

Professor JEFFREY AUBÉ

Jeff Aubé is a native of Connecticut, where he was born in the same hospital as John Porco, and spent the rest of his youth in south Florida. He attended the University of Miami, where he did undergraduate research with Professor Robert Gawley (with whom he later co-authored the graduate text “Principles of Asymmetric Synthesis”, currently in its second edition). He received his Ph.D. in chemistry in 1984 from Duke University, working with Professor Steven Baldwin, and was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at Yale University with Professor Samuel Danishefsky. In 1986, he moved to the University of Kansas, where he is now University Distinguished Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and holds a courtesy professorship in the Department of Chemistry.

Aubé’s research interests lie in the chemistry of heterocyclic compounds and their applications to problems in medicinal organic chemistry. His group has largely focused on nitrogen ring-expansion chemistry, having worked on developing chemistry to expand the classical canon of the Schmidt and Beckmann reaction to include stereoselective rearrangements of oxaziridines and the azido-Schmidt reaction. The latter process was discovered in the Aubé laboratory and has found extensive use in natural product synthesis in laboratories throughout the world. The lab’s interests in bioorganic chemistry include collaborations in the area of opioid pharmacology (with Laura Bohn and Thomas Prisinzano), steroid biosynthesis inhibitors (with Emily Scott), and in the discovery of anti-Mtb agents (with Carl Nathan). Aubé served as the principal investigator of the Chemical Methodology and Library Development Center program at Kansas as well as a specialized chemistry lab in the NIH’s Molecular Libraries Initiative.

Aubé has been honored for his research and scholarship by his receipt of awards from the American Chemical Society (including the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award and the Midwest Award, bestowed by the St. Louis Section of the ACS) and for teaching (including the university-wide HOPE Award and the Kemper Fellowship for Teaching Excellence). He is a fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Chemical Society.

Dr. ANDREW P. COMBS

Dr. Combs received dual B.S. degrees in chemistry and molecular biology (1988) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry at UCLA (1994) under the direction of Professor Robert Armstrong and then went on to Professor Stuart L. Schreiber’s laboratory at Harvard University as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Post-Doctoral Fellow (1994-1996). Andrew joined DuPont-Merck Pharmaceuticals Company in 1996 where he initiated and led a Target Directed Parallel Synthesis group of ~50 members. In 2000, he was promoted to Director at DuPont Pharmaceuticals, then BMS, where he led medicinal chemistry teams in CNS and oncology programs.

Andrew is currently Executive Director of medicinal chemistry at Incyte Co. where he has led medicinal chemistry teams to the identification of clinical candidates for strategic oncology projects since 2003. Andrew also heads the chemical technologies, analytical and computational chemistry groups at Incyte. Andrew’s research interests embrace the application of innovative technologies to expedite drug discovery efforts, such as microwave-assisted synthesis, parallel synthesis, automated LCMS purification methods and use of electronic laboratory notebooks. Andrew has published 50+ peer reviewed papers, 20+ patents, several book chapters and lectured at numerous symposia. He has served on the editorial board for J. Combi. Chem., J. Mol. Div., and QSAR & Combi. Sci.. He is an avid supporter of basic research, serving on various NIH review committees and discussion panels. Andrew is also an active member of the American Chemical Society (ACS) having chaired a variety of ACS meetings, including the first three ACS prospectives meetings in Combinatorial Chemistry (2000-2003) and the first five ACS prospective meeting in Medicinal Chemistry (2005-2009).

Dr. JAMES INGLESE

Dr. Inglese currently heads a laboratory focused on the development of assay and screening technology targeting rare and neglected disease within the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) and is an Adjunct Investigator of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). Dr. Inglese received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the Pennsylvania State University and completed post-doctoral training in the laboratory of Professor Robert J. Lefkowitz at Duke University Medical Center. Dr. Inglese has led research teams at the Princeton-based biotech Pharmacopeia (that later merged with Ligand Pharmaceuticals) and Merck Research Laboratories before moving to the NIH. Over the past two decades Dr. Inglese has contributed to over 150 publications and patents describing major contributions to the early drug discovery process through the development of novel assay formats and high throughput screening paradigms.