Feb 23
Chemistry Department Seminar: Conor Caffrey, University of California San Diego
"Drug discovery for neglected tropical diseases at the University of California San Diego"
Conor R. Caffrey, Center for Discovery and Innovation in Parasitic Diseases, Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of California San Diego
In terms of mortality and morbidity, neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) caused by parasitic organisms disproportionally affect people struggling with poverty. The few available drugs suffer from problems relating to variable efficacy, toxicity and drug resistance, and the for-profit pharmaceutical industry has little investment motive to develop new drugs. In this context, the Center for Discovery and Innovation in Parasitic Diseases (CDIPD.org) has been engaged in early pre-clinical drug discovery for NTDs for over 20 years. For this presentation, two ongoing projects relating to the discovery and development of small molecule drugs to treat schistosomiasis and Human African Trypanosomiasis (HAT) will be discussed. First, I will describe a project detailing how triazolopyrimidine and phenylpyrimidine chemistries that were orginally synthesized to treat neurodegenerative diseases are being re-tooled and chemically optimized for the potential treatment of schistosomiasis. Second, I will discuss the proteasome (a large multimeric protein complex in the cell) as a drug target for both schistosomiasis and HAT; specifically, our current development of proteasome inhibitors derived from the marine natural product, carmaphycin B. The presentation will cover some of the interdisciplinary approaches (e.g., parasite biology, assay development, analytical and synthetic chemistry, and small animal models of infection) used to advance both projects.
*This seminar counts towards the chemistry major seminar attendance requirement.