Assistant Professor, Biomedical Informatics, College of Medicine

Novel Computational Drug Repurposing to Target Autophagy for Cancer Treatments

My research objective is to advance pharmaceutical research of cancer therapies by harnessing the power of high-performance computing and biomedical big data sources for insights otherwise not possible. The extraordinary cost for research and development to bring a new drug to market drives up consumers’ drug costs and prohibits access of life-saving pharmaceuticals to many in our population. High-performance computing is a safe, efficient, and cost-effective tool to further understand the nature of drugs and improve the discovery pipeline. The objective of this project is to development a machine learning model to make accurate drug-repurposing predictions. The repurposing of already approved drugs for new diseases further drives down treatment costs. This model will be trained using diverse proteins so that predictions can be made on novel drug targets in which experimental drug binding data is not available. The project will include a case study of the p62/SQSTM1/Sequestosome-1 protein. Inhibiting this protein is expected to aid in the treatment of many cancers, including prostate cancer, which is diagnosed in one out of every seven men in their lifetime. Although Sequestosome-1 is a promising drug target, there is no experimental data on the entire protein structure or known binding compounds in the public data repositories to be used in computational drug discovery research. This work will model and validate the structure of Sequestosome-1, make drug-repurposing predictions using a model for diverse proteins, and experimentally test the best predictions. This is preliminary work for clinical trials targeting the treatment of prostate cancer.

Assistant Professor, Department of Toxicology and Cancer Biology, College of Medicine

Latexin as a target for pharmaceutical intervention

Associate Professor, Department of Pharmacy Practice & Science, College of Pharmacy

Novel Immunomodulatory Macrolides - Discovery and Function

While primarily functioning to orchestrate remodeling and repair mechanisms, alternatively activated macrophages (AAM) are important in controlling lung homeostasis, inflammation, and subsequent damage.  Our current work investigates the function of AAM in regulating the inflammatory response to extracellular Gram-negative bacterial pneumonia.  We have published that azithromycin can induce macrophage characteristics that are consistent with an AAM-Iike phenotype.  With this pilot award we will investigate whether macrolide lead compounds can be identified that induce alternative macrophage polarization in vitro and in vivo, that have increased potency compared to AZM and are devoid of antimicrobial activity.

Associate Professor, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy

Drug discovery for cessation of comorbid alcohol+nicotine abuse

Professor, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy

Integrated approach to natural product scaffold metamorphosis