College of Pharmacy
Twin Cities
Applying the principles of fragment- and structure-based drug design, this research investigates novel structural templates for the discovery of selective HDAC inhibitors. The strategy is to design, synthesize, and screen small fragments with limited structural features. Preliminary biological evaluations of these fragments allow for an expeditious exploration of diverse chemical structures, and provide useful information about the protein-ligand interactions. Subsequent chemical modifications, guided by the observed structure-activity relationship (SAR) and computational modeling, are aimed to optimize the potency and potential selectivity among HDAC isoforms.
Research by this group was featured on the MSI website in January 2015: Creating Compounds to Treat Disease.