John Buolamwini, PhD
Chair of Pharmaceutical Sciences
Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
College of Pharmacy, School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies
Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science

Host: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics

My laboratory in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy at the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science in North Chicago, is involved in small molecule drug/probe design and discovery research. The talk will highlight the use of computer-aided drug design, chemical synthesis and biological studies in this endeavor. Disease targets of interest to be discussed are EGFR, MDM2 and STAT3 for cancer, HIV integrase for HIV/AIDS, and nucleoside transporters for ischemia-reperfusion injury and protection against drug-induced mitochondrial toxicity. Through an interdisciplinary approach, several compounds have been discovered, yielding potential therapeutic leads and/or pharmacological tools for difficult to treat cancers such as pancreatic cancer, triple negative breast cancer and melanoma, as well as ischemic heart disease, HIV/AIDS, and mitochondrial rescue.