Phone: 305.243.8869
Office: Room 6112A, Rosenstiel Medical Science Building (RMSB), 1600 NW 10th Avenue, Miami, FL 33136
I am a Medicinal Chemist in the PhD program at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in the department of Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology. My projects are focused on the rational design and synthesis of small libraries for the treatment of disease with “dark” targets or multiple targets through polypharmacology. Some of this work has been a part of the NIH common fund project “illuminating the Druggable Genome”. Currently, I am developing novel pre-clinical compounds for psuedokinase NACK inhibition (chemotheraputic), Wnt inhibition (addiction) and dual kinase/BRD4 inhibition (epigenetic chemotheraputic).
Our approach to lead compound identification involves the incorporation of pheno and genotypic cell-based screening data sets, large-scale data analysis, machine learning techniques, virtual library design and computational docking studies. With these powerful tools in hand, there’s a much better sense of what compounds should be synthesized.
I am also fortunate to be involved in the NIH common fund project Library of Integrated Network of Cell-Based Signatures (LINCS) where I lend my knowledge of organic chemistry towards small-molecule compound standardization pipelines for the LINCS data portal. This incredible opportunity has also facilitated a collaboration with The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard on the design of very unique libraries for in-vitro screening.
My research interests include biomimetic synthesis, dearomatization strategies, photochemical methodologies, natural product fragment-based drug design, drug design for neuropsychiatric disease, and chemical optogenetics.