Dr. Zhang will discuss the biological functionalization of polymeric nanoparticles with a layer of membrane coating derived from natural cells, focusing on the use of these cell-mimicking nanoparticles for the treatment of bacterial and viral infections.

The Natural Products Discovery Center (NPDC) at UF Scripps Biomedical Research houses one of the world’s largest actinobacterial strain collections, totaling ~125,000 strains.  These strains, isolated over the last eight decades and from 69 different countries, encode natural product chemical and biological diversity that are impossible to reproduce in laboratory settings today. Professor Shen will talk about his group's efforts to launch a large-scale genome sequencing campaign to establish the Natural Products Genomics Resource Center (NPGRC) at NPDC. The sequenced genomes will be used to create the NPGRC database, which, together with the strains, will be made available to the scientific community to enable natural product studies and drug discovery.

This Drug ACTION Specific Seminar will feature Dr. Oren Becher of Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai: "Diffuse Midline Glioma - Which therapeutic targets are relevant?"

"The Male Pill: Are We there Yet?"
To provide couples with additional safe and reversible options for contraception, the development of non-hormonal contraceptives for both men and women is highly desirable to assist with family planning and reducing unintended pregnancies. In collaboration with the Wolgemuth group at Columbia University we have discovered the non-hormonal male contraceptive agent YCT529 that is targeting retinoic acid receptor alpha, a validated male contraceptive target. Together with our industrial partner Your Choice Therapeutics (YCT) we are developing YCT529 for first-in-human clinical trials. The presentation will discuss the discovery and development of YCT529 including the preclinical efficacy in mouse and non-human primates.

This Drug DISCOVERY Specific Seminar will feature Dr. Marcy Balunas of University of Michigan: "Silent, Cryptic, or Orphan: Interrogating Specialized Metabolite Production in Host-Microbe Symbioses"

This Drug DELIVERY Specific Seminar will feature Dr. Sarah Gong of UW-Madison: "Nanoparticles for Safe and Efficient Delivery of Nucleic Acids and CRISPR Genome Editors"

This Drug DISCOVERY Specific Seminar will feature Dr. Neha Garg of Georgia Tech: "Mapping microbial responses to biological and chemical environments using omics"

The 2023 Sponsored Seminar in Targeted Protein Degradation will feature Alessio Ciulli, PhD, of the University of Dundee: "How PROTACs Work: Why the ternary complex matters and it impacts degrader design"