Only 1 in 20 anticancer compounds that begin human clinical trials will become an approved drug.  Many have pointed at the traditional development pathway -- whereby anticancer efficacy is assessed in rodent models, and the next efficacy assessment is in people -- as a major reason for this poor success rate.  We have been working to evaluate candidate compounds in pets with cancer, as a way to help these veterinary cancer patients that often have no other options and as a method to guide the selection of the human drug candidate.  The lecture will describe this process through the example of the procaspase-3 activating compound PAC-1, and will also detail our work to synthesize complex and diverse compound from natural products, and to use them to identify novel broad-spectrum antibiotics.

Speaker Link:
Faculty Host:
Event Contact: