Drug Discovery & Development Faculty

Michael Bartlett University Professor Pharmaceutical & Biomedical Sciences; Neuroscience ADME of drugs and environmental toxicants; impact of compounds on memory, cognition, and neuropathic pain; oligonucleotide therapeutics and biomarkers. Website

Blake Billmyre Assistant Professor, Pharmaceutical & Biomedical Sciences Department/Infectious Diseases Department High throughput genetics to better understand evolution of fungal pathogens and drive antifungal drug discovery. Website

Houjian Cai Associate Professor Pharmaceutical & Biomedical Sciences Post-translational modification including protein acylation, fatty acid metabolism, prostate stem cell, Src family kinases, prostate cancer, small molecular inhibitor. Website

Maria Belen Cassera Associate Professor Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Metabolomic approaches applied to drug target selection and validation in human pathogens; discovery and development of new chemotherapeutic interventions. Website

David Crich Professor; Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Drug Design Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Sciences; Chemistry Organic and medicinal chemistry; carbohydrate chemistry; glycomimetics; drug design and development with emphasis on multi-drug resistant infectious diseases Website

Roberto Docampo Professor Cellular Biology Cellular and molecular biology of acidocalcisomes; the role of polyphosphate in trypanosomatids. Website

Eugene Douglass Assistant Professor Pharmaceutical & Biomedical Sciences Multi-drug resistance(MDR) causes most cancer deaths(Nat. Rev. Cancer 2018, 18, 452). We use organic chemistry, cell biology and data-science to overcome MDR. Website

Kosuke Funato Assistant Professor Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Molecular and cellular mechanisms of brain tumors; oncohistone mutations; human ES cell-based tumor modeling; tumor heterogeneity and evolution Website

Phillip Greenspan Associate Professor Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Sciences Inhibition of glycation and LDL oxidation by natural products and nutraceuticals. Website

Neil J. Grimsey Assistant Professor Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Sciences Defining the spatiotemporal regulation of kinase pathways and the regulation of GPCR induced inflammation and proangiogenic signaling, for the development of therapeutic agents. Website

Hitesh Handa Associate Professor Pharmaceutical & Biomedical Sciences Translational research in biomaterials (antifouling, antiplatelet, antibacterial, and antiviral) for tissue engineering and medical device applications Website

Donald Harn Professor GRA Distinguished Investigator Infectious Diseases Mechanistic analysis of parasite induced immune suppression. Translational research on immuno-modulation pertaining to inflammation based diseases. Vaccine development and trials. Website

Gerald W. Hart Professor Biochemistry & Molecular Biology; Eminent Scholar in Drug Discovery; Complex Carbohydrate Research Center Nutrient Regulation of Signaling and Transcription: Mechanisms Underlying Diabetes, Neurodegeneration and Cancer Website

Kate Hummels Assistant Professor, Microbiology Department Our work focuses on understanding the regulation of cell envelope biosynthesis in bacteria using genetic, biochemical, and cell biological approaches. Website

Anumantha G. Kanthasamy John H. "Johnny" Isakson Chair and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar Professor, Physiology & Pharmacology Department Director, Center for Neurological Disease Research Research focuses on cellular and molecular mechanisms of neurodegeneration, identifying novel druggable targets, discovering prodromal biomarkers and novel reengineered gut microbiome based therapeutics for treatment of neurological disorders such as …

Arthi Kanthasamy Professor, Physiology & Pharmacology Department Research focuses on cellular and molecular mechanisms of neurodegeneration, identifying novel immunomodulatory drugs, discovering biomarkers for diabetes, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases related dementia. Website

Eileen Kennedy Professor Pharmaceutical & Biomedical Sciences Chemical biology, kinase signaling, cancer, signal transduction, drug discovery. Website

Dennis Kyle Professor GRA Eminent Scholar Chair in Antiparasitic Drug Discovery Cellular Biology & Infectious Diseases The discovery and development of new drugs to prevent or treat malaria and diseases caused by brain-eating amoebae. Elucidating mechanism(s) of resistance and discovering new drug treatment regimens, combinations, or strategies to overcome resistance. Website

Dexi Liu Professor Pharmaceutical & Biomedical Sciences; Neuroscience Gene therapy, obesity, drug delivery, gene drug discovery. Website

Cory Momany Associate Professor Pharmaceutical & Biomedical Sciences X-ray crystallography of macromolecules, prokaryotic transcriptional regulators. Website

Silvia Moreno Distinguished Research Professor Cellular Biology, Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases Metabolism and drug development against protozoan parasites. Calcium signaling and storage in Toxoplasma gondii. Website

S. Mark Tompkins Professor Infectious Diseases; Toxicology Transmission and pathogenicity of zoonotic influenza virus infection and development of vaccination and the prevention and treatment of viral infections. Website

M. Stephen Trent UGA Foundation Distinguished Professor Infectious Diseases Characterizing the assembly of bacterial surface structures, Development of vaccines for viral and bacterial pathogens, Systems approaches to understanding microbial diseases Website

Chelsey VanDrisse Assistant Professor, Genetics Department Our lab seeks to uncover novel regulatory mechanisms of biofilm formation to undermine bacterial survival in chronic infections. Website

Ryan Weiss Assistant Professor Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Complex Carbohydrate Research Center Investigating the regulatory mechanisms of glycosylation using genomic, chemical, and genetic approaches with particular focus on the discovery of novel drugs and targets to treat human diseases. Website

Catherine White Associate Professor Pharmaceutical & Biomedical Sciences; Toxicology The influence of gender on the disposition of drugs and drug carriers, and their subsequent therapeutic or toxic outcomes, and the physiological-based pharmacokinetic modeling for utilization in predicting toxicity and exposures. Website

Robert Woods Professor Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Immunological carbohydrate-protein interactions studied by computational simulation and experimental methods. Website

Yaguang Xi Professor and Department Head, Department of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Sciences, UGA Athletic Association Distinguished Professor Targeted therapy and cancer chemoprevention; preclinical animal models; cancer immunotherapy; tumor microenvironment and exosomal microRNAs; biomarker of tumor metastasis. Website

Jin Xie Associate Professor Chemistry Nanoparticle-based imaging and drug delivery; radiation therapy and photodynamic therapy Website

Zhong-Ru (Paul) Xie Assistant Professor Bioinformatics Computational drug discovery, simulation model, new computational tools for drug design Website

May Xiong Associate Professor Pharmaceutical & Biomedical Sciences Biomaterial-based systems in the area of iron chelation therapy, biological metal sensors, overcoming antibiotic drug resistance in Gram-negative bacteria, and chelation of transfusional iron overload. Website

Hang Yin Assistant professor Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Stem cell biology, brown fat development and induction, non-coding RNA, development of novel therapies for human obesity and type 2 diabetes Website

Jason Zastre Associate Professor Pharmaceutical & Biomedical Sciences; Toxicology Transport, micronutrient, hypoxia, cancer. Website

Nadja Zeltner Assistant Professor Biochemistry & Molecular Biology; Cellular Biology; Neuroscience Effects of pathological stress on cells of the peripheral nervous system and the adrenal gland. In vitro disease modeling using human pluripotent stem cells. Website

Y. George Zheng Professor Georgia Cancer Coalition Distinguished Scholar Pharmaceutical & Biomedical Sciences Drug Development, Chemical Biology, Cancer Disease Mechanism, Epigenetics and Genetics, Histone Modifications, Molecular Biology, Biochemistry, Enzymology, and Biophysics. Website