Frederick Peter Guengerich received his BS from the University of Illinois in 1970 and then completed his graduate work at Vanderbilt University, receiving his PhD in biochemistry in 1973. After two years as a research fellow at the University of Michigan, he was hired as an assistant professor of biochemistry at Vanderbilt in 1975 and has been on faculty since then, having attained the rank of professor in 1983. He was Director of the Center in Molecular Toxicology, an interdepartmental program at Vanderbilt, from 1981 to 2011. His research laboratory deals with the chemical and biological mechanisms by which drugs and cancer-causing chemicals are processed and their relevance to drug development, toxicity, and disease. A major area of interest is the enzymology of cytochrome P450 enzymes, which are the major catalysts involved in the metabolism of drugs. These enzymes are of particular interest in pharmaceutical discovery and development because of their significance regarding issues such as bioavailability and toxicity.
Francis K. Yoshimoto was born and raised in the Bay Area, California. He gained valuable experience as an undergraduate researcher in the lab of Professor Richmond Sarpong at the University of California at Berkeley. After completing his Ph.D. in the lab of Professor Richard Auchus, first at the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas, TX, and then at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, he pursued postdoctoral research at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in the laboratory of Professor Frederick Guengerich. In 2016, he started his independent research career in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Texas at San Antonio. His research interests include enzyme mechanisms, mass spectrometry, and target-oriented synthesis.
