Tagged: CMD news
BU-CMD Welcomes Four New Faculty Members
Dr. Karen Allen, Ph.D.
Professor of Chemistry
Dr. Allen brings expertise in the areas of X-Ray crystallography and enzyme structure and function to the CMD.
Dr. Sandor Vajda, Ph.D.
Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Chemistry
Dr. Vajda brings expertise in the areas of computational methods and drug discovery to the CMD.
Dr. Arturo Vegas, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Chemistry
Dr. Vegas brings expertise in the areas of drug delivery and targeting to the CMD.
Dr. Adrian Whitty, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Chemistry
Dr. Whitty brings expertise in the areas of biological chemistry and protein-protein and protein-drug interactions to the CMD.
CMD Welcomes Two New Members in October
CMD wishes to Welcome two new members to the team:
David Huang - postdoc
Wenhan Zhang - postdoc
Both will be joining the team in October.
NIH Funds BU-CMD to Develop New Antifungal Compounds
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a four-year grant to Center for Molecular Discovery researcher Lauren Brown and collaborators Leah Cowen (University of Toronto) and Luke Whitesell (Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT) on "Targeting Hsp90 in crytococcal fungal pathogenesis." The assembled team combines expertise in fungal biology (Cowen), medicinal chemistry (Brown) and pharmacology/experimental therapeutics (Whitesell) with the goal of developing drug-like small-molecule probes for use in studying disease mechanisms of the fungus Cryptococcus.
Invasive Cryptococcus infections pose a grave threat to human health and have enormous economic consequences. Cryptococcal meningitis, the major clinical manifestation of the disease, has a 100% mortatlity rate if left untreated. Even with the best available therapies, mortality rates remain high at 35-40% due to a limited number of drug classes available, and compromised usefulness of these drugs caused by both dose-limiting toxicity and the emergence of high-grade antifungal drug resistance.
In this project, the team will collaborate to develop small molecule chemical compounds to study a critical molecular mechanism that supports both fungal virulence and the onset of drug-resistance. These compounds will also impact clinical care by serving as promising leads for the future development of new, more effective antifungal drugs.
Professor Porco speaks at The 33rd Herbert C. Brown Lectures in Organic Chemistry, Purdue University
Professor Porco spoke at The 33rd Herbert C. Brown Lectures in Organic Chemistry, Purdue University, on April 15, 2016. His talk was entitled “Chemical Synthesis and Biological Studies of the Rocaglates and Derivatives.”
Abstract: The plant genus Aglaia produces a number of secondary metabolites including the cyclopenta[b]benzofuran silvestrol. Cyclopenta[b]benzofuran natural products possess potent anticancer properties due to modulation of the activity of the RNA helicase eukaryotic initiation factor 4A (eIF4A), which is involved in loading ribosomes onto mRNA templates during translation initiation, a step frequently deregulated in cancer. In this presentation, we will describe our efforts to synthesize silvestrol and rocaglate analogues using photocycloaddition of 3-hydroxyflavones with various dipolarophiles, and evaluation of the rocaglates produced as inhibitors of eukaryotic protein translation.
CMD Welcomes Three New Members
CMD wishes to Welcome three new members to the team:
Ravi Chetree - Analytical Core Manager
Nandini Vallavoju - Postdoc
Wenqing Xu - Postdoc
CMD Bids Farewell to Mikayo Hayashi
After 2 years as a Visiting Researcher in our lab Mikayo is returning home to Japan to be a Team Leader at Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. We thank her for her great research here in the CMD and wish her the best in her future endeavours.
Speakers Announced – 2017 BU-CMD Symposium “Molecular Discovery: From Chemical Synthesis to Biological Applications”
The biennial BU-CMD Symposium "Molecular Discovery: From Chemical Synthesis to Biological Applications" will be held on June 23, 2017.
We are pleased to welcome the following speakers to the 2017 BU-CMD symposium:
- Professor Robert Langer (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
- Professor Frances H. Arnold (California Institute of Technology)
- Professor Benjamin List (Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung)
- Professor Dirk Trauner (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)
Please register at Eventbrite if you plan to attend - registration is free.
BU-CMD Highlighted in Bostonia
Our Center was recently profiled on the BU Research website and Bostonia magazine. The article, "Molecule Makers," gives an overview of our small molecule screening collection and some of our most exciting projects in medicinal chemistry and drug discovery.
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