Postdoctoral Research Initiatives

FastLab

Walter Fast, PhD - College of Pharmacy, The University of Texas at Austin
Elizabeth Grimm, PhD - Department of Experimental Therapeutics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer, and is highly resistant to current chemotherapies, so new drugs to treat this type of cancer are of significant interest. Increased nitric oxide (NO) production correlates with poor prognosis in stage III melanoma patients, so we are developing drugs that can block the formation of NO. Previous investigators have focused on inhibiting the enzymes responsible for NO biosynthesis, but these strategies suffer from a lack of selectivity that can lead to undesirable side effects. We are using an innovative combinatorial strategy to design small molecule therapeutics that can specifically block a different target enzyme, DDAH, which can also control NO production in humans. By combining our studies of the catalytic mechanism of DDAH with the high-throughput robotic capabilities of TI-3D and bench-scale organic synthesis, we are working to develop highly selective inhibitors as novel drug candidates for the treatment of melanoma.

Fastlab

Grimm Lab