26
July
An innovative research proposal from Jennifer Golden, assistant professor in the Pharmaceutical Sciences Division and Associate Director, Medicinal Chemistry Center, was among a topnotch group of faculty to receive the UW2020: WARF Discovery Initiative Award. The infrastructure project entitled “Early Stage Translational Drug Discovery: Matchmaking UW Biology and Medicinal Chemistry Resources Towards High Impact Compounds and Outcomes” will develop a UW–Madison library of at least 1,600 novel compounds, constructed from robust chemical methodologies already in hand and crafted using fundamental medicinal chemistry principles. The project will be funded for two years in the amount of nearly $400,000. The multi-year project will foster cross-collaboration between UW chemists, medicinal chemists and biologists with Golden and Weiping Tang, associate professor, Pharmaceutical Sciences Division, serving as co-Principal Investigators, Michael Hoffmann, professor, Oncology, and John Feltenberger, associate scentist and Assistant Director of the Medicinal Chemistry Center, serving as Co-Investigators. Ten additional collaborators span a range of departments and disciplines. Golden joined the School of Pharmacy in 2015. Her research focus includes synthetic methodology, medicinal chemistry and drug discovery, optimization of structure-activity and structure-property relationships, exploratory pharmacological mining of novel chemical scaffolds, and emphasis on development of anticancer and anti-infective agents. Golden currently teaches courses in Medicinal Chemistry I and Natural Product Synthesis, Biosynthesis and Drug Discovery.