Medicinal Chemistry

medicinal chemistry

This program is focused on central activities required for the development of small organic molecules as cancer chemotherapeutic agents. Members of this program use a wide variety of approaches, including chemical, biochemical, cellular, and animal methods to design and discover drugs. These approaches include (but are not limited to):

  • Natural Product-Based Drug Design and Discovery – Synthesis of anticancer natural products and analogs thereof and biological studies on their mechanism of action.
     
  • Biologically-Targeted Drug Design – Design, synthesis, and biological evaluation of synthetic compounds as potential inhibitors of anticancer enzyme targets, and antagonists of anticancer receptors.
     
  • Screening of Biological Targets for Drug Discovery – Development and utilization of methods, including systems biology methods, for the high-throughput evaluation of potential anticancer agents.
     
  • Preclinical Models for Drug Development – Evaluation of potential chemotherapeutic and chemopreventive agents in cellular and animal cancer models.


Specific examples of activities in this program include:

  • Development of new synthetic routes to natural products known to function as antitumor or chemopreventive agents.
     
  • Mechanistic evaluation of new anticancer natural products.
     
  • Design and synthesis of targeted protein kinase inhibitors.
     
  • Design and synthesis of inhibitors of post-translational modifications.
     
  • Design and synthesis of topoisomerase inhibitors.
     
  • Development of systems methods for discovery of novel potential anticancer targets.
     
  • Studies of potential chemotherapeutic agents in mouse xenograph and other animal models.


Program Members:

Richard F. Borch, MCMP
David Colby, MCMP
Mark S. Cushman, MCMP
Mingji Dai, CHEM
 V. Jo Davisson, MCMP
Jennifer Freeman, HSci
Philip L. Fuchs, CHEM
Arun K. Ghosh, CHEM; MCMP
Richard A. Gibbs, MCMP, Leader
Tony Hazbun, MCMP
Qing Jiang, F&N
Deborah W. Knapp, VCS, Co-leader
Markus Lill, MCMP
Mark A. Lipton, CHEM
Philip Low, CHEM
Sulma I. Mohammed, VPTH
Laurie Parker, MCMP
David J. Waters, VCS