The Office for Technology Commercialization featured Dr. Philip Portoghese's opioid receptor research in their May publication of Inventor Spotlight.
An interview with Dr. Robert Fecik was the lead story on the 5 p.m. news broadcast of FOX-9 TV Thursday, September 27. He spoke about a study confirming a link between increased alcohol consumption and an increased risk of breast cancer.
Congratulations to Dr. Robert Vince for being selected for induction into the Hall of Fame of the Division of Medicinal Chemistry of the American Chemical Society. Inductees must be members of the Division who have made an overall outstanding contribution to medicinal chemistry through a combination of research, teaching and service. Dr. Philip S. Portoghese was inducted into the Hall of Fame last year and therefore the Department has now two Hall of Fame members. The "Medicinal Chemistry Hall of Fame" was established by the executive committee of the Division of Medicinal Chemistry, American Chemical Society in 2006. All Hall of Fame members will be honored at the upcoming Boston ACS meeting and will be receiving a plaque. |
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Swapna Bhagwanth received second place in the "Peptide Idol" Poster competition at the 20th American Peptide Society Symposium recently held in Montreal, Canada.The title of her poster presentation was "An RCM-Based Approach to the Synthesis of Type VIa Beta-turn Mimics of Pro-Xaa-Pro". The second place prize was a certificate and a check for $ 1000.
Congratulations to Dr. Jiachang Gong! Research carried out by Jiachang Gong in the Sturla lab concerning the development of synthetic nucleosides to probe chemically induced DNA damage is the subject of a news report in the magazine Chemistry World, April 9, 2007, a publication of the Royal Society of Chemistry. A preliminary communication of the findings appeared on NIH Chemical-Biology Interface Training Grant 2007-2008 as first year trainees.
Dr. Shana Sturla receives AACR Minority Scholar in Cancer Research Award. Shana Sturla, Assistant Professor, is one of 26 early-career scientists to receive an American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) Minority Scholar in Cancer Research Awards. These awards provide financial support to minority scientists to participate in the 2007 AACR Annual Meeting. Sturla will present a poster entitled "Investigating the mechanism of selective toxicity of antitumor acylfulvenes: Identification of depurinating acylfulvene-DNA adducts" in the Chemical Biology in Carcinogenesis, Therapy and Drug Delivery session during the conference. Xiaodan Liu, a graduate student in the Sturla lab, will present a poster titled "The action of anticancer acylfulvenes on thioredoxin reductase" during the same session.
Congratulations to Dr. Rodney Johnson on the 5 year renewal of his NIH Grant entitled, "Pro-Leu-Gly-NH2 and Dopamine Receptor Modulation." Dr. Johnson has been continuously funded on this project for 23 years: the second longest continuously funded grant in the Dept. and College of Pharmacy!!
Congratulations to Dr. Sturla, her NCI R01 grant proposal entitled "Covalent Modification of DNA and Protein by Bioactivated Antitumor Acylfulvenes" received a priority score at the 5th percentile (i.e., in outstanding funding range). Official information will arrive after the council meets in January. The project relates to work that was recently featured in Chemical & Engineering News, September 12, 2006 and reported earlier this year in The Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. Links to both are below.
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/84/i38/8438acylfulvenes.html
http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/article.cgi/jmcmar/2006/49/i08/html/jm051104t.html
Philip Portoghese, College of Pharmacy, received the 2006 Nauta Award in Medicinal Chemistry. The international award recognizes outstanding achievements in the field of medicinal chemistry and was presented at the International Symposium on Medicinal Chemistry in Istanbul. He is an expert in opioid receptors.
Congratulations to Dr. Robert Fecik and John Giraldes M.S., a former student in Dr. Fecik's lab, for their news breaking research publications!
Two articles on John Giraldes' research were published in Nature Chemical Biology October 2006:
Giraldes, J. W.; Akey, D. L.; Kittendorf, J. D.; Sherman, D. H.;
Smith, J. L.; Fecik, R. A. Structural and Mechanistic Insights of
Polyketide Macrolactonization from Polyketide-based Affinity Labels.
Nat. Chem. Biol. 2006, 2, 531536.
Akey, D. L.; Kittendorf, J. D.; Giraldes, J. W.; Fecik, R. A.;
Sherman, D. H.; Smith, J. L. Structural Basis for Macrolactonization
by the Pikromycin Thioesterase. Nat. Chem. Biol. 2006, 2, 537542.
KARE-11 aired a 90 second segment on September 12, 2006, on their 6 pm newscast including an interview with Dr. Fecik.
http://www.ahc.umn.edu/news/releases/antibiotic091106/home.html
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