Dr. Khaled A Shaaban is currently a Research Associate Professor at the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy and also serves as the Director of the Center for Pharmaceutical Research and Innovation (CPRI) Natural Product Repository initiative. He obtained his B.S. Degree in Chemistry (2000) from Mansoura University. He received his M.S. (2005) and PhD. Degrees in Organic Chemistry (2009) from the University of Göttingen. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow (2009–2011) at the University of Kentucky. He has published more than 95 peer-reviewed high-impact research articles and mentored five high school students, eight Ph.D. students, eight postdoctoral fellows, eight visiting scholars, and five junior faculty members. His expertise is in the area of natural product discovery, natural product biosynthesis, and natural product-based lead discovery.
Dr. Thomas E Prisinzano currently serves as the Director of the Center for Pharmaceutical Research and Innovation (CPRI) and the Chair of the Pharmaceutical Sciences Department at the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy. He received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Delaware (1995) and a doctorate in Pharmaceutical Sciences from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond (2000). From 2000-2003, he was an Intramural Training Award (IRTA) Fellow at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Dr. Prisinzano has received a number of awards for his research, including a Matt Suffness (Young Investigator) Award from the American Society of Pharmacognosy (2008), a Joseph Cochin Young Investigator Award from the College on Drug Dependence (2011), a David W. Robertson Award for Excellence in Medicinal Chemistry from the Division of Medicinal Chemistry of the American Chemical Society (2012), and an Innovator Award from the College on Problems of Drug Dependence (2018). His research combines medicinal and natural product chemistry and is directed toward the elucidation of the structure and function of neurotransmitter systems in the central nervous system in normal, drug-altered, and pathological states and the development of medications for the treatment of drug abuse and pain.
Prof. Dr. Jon S Thorson is a Professor and also serves as the chief scientific officer at the College of Pharmacy, University of Kentucky. He received his B.A. degree in Chemistry (1986) from Augsburg College and a Ph.D. degree in Organic Chemistry (1993) from the University of Minnesota. He held a postdoctoral appointment as a Merck Postdoctoral Fellow of the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation (1993–1996) at the University of California. He joined the UK College of Pharmacy in 2011 as the first director of the new UK Center for Pharmaceutical Research and Innovation (2011–2020), the interim co-director of the Markey Cancer Center’s Drug Discovery, Delivery, and Translational Therapeutics Program (2012–2015) and the co-director of the Drug Discovery and Development Module at the UK Center for Clinical and Translational Science (2012–present). His research interests include chemical biology, the discovery and application of natural products and biocatalysts, biosynthesis and mechanistic enzymology and enzyme engineering and evolution.
Prof. Dr. Jurgen Rohr is a Professor and the Vice-Chair of UKCOP's Pharmaceutical Sciences Department at the University of Kentucky. Before joining the University of Kentucky, he was an Assistant and Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry of the University of Göttingen and an Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences of the Medical University of South Carolina. Dr. Rohr holds a PhD in Organic Chemistry and Microbiology from the University of Göttingen. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Chemistry, Ohio State University. He has authored over 190+ scientific articles in biochemical and chemical journals. His research is focused on natural product drugs, i.e., antibiotics, anticancer drugs and drugs against bone diseases. It includes the elucidation of complex multi-step biosynthetic pathways carried out by bacteria, fungi or plants, with a particular emphasis on enzyme mechanisms.
Dr. Markos Leggas is a faculty member in the Department of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Services at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. He is also the Director of the Pharmacology Shared Resources of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. He holds a BA from Union University and an MSc and a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and University of Memphis. His research interests include pharmacometabolomic methods to improve therapeutic outcomes and minimize toxicity in the context of pediatric clinical trials, pharmacometrics and systems pharmacology approaches to enable drug development and guide therapy, the development of transcription factor pharmacologic inhibitors, and the biomarkers and treatment of neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome.
