OSU College of Pharmacy The Ohio State University
Dr. Kinghorn's Research Group in 2007
Members of the Research Group of Project 1 of the Program Project

Dr. Kinghorn receives NIH Program Project Grant for "Discovery of Anticancer Agents of Diverse Natural Origin"


Dr. A. Douglas Kinghorn, Jack L. Beal Professor and Chair, OSU College of Pharmacy, has recently received a five-year, $7 million program project grant (PPG) from the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health (NIH), for a research project entitled “Discovery of Anticancer Agents of Diverse Natural Origin”. The overall objective of this work is to discover new compounds present in tropical plants, aquatic cyanobacteria (blue-green algae), and filamentous fungi, for development as potential new cancer chemotherapeutic agents.

In this multi-institutional and multidisciplinary research program, extracts from the organisms to be collected will be screened in biological test systems available at OSU College of Pharmacy and three collaborating institutions, namely, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, Research Triangle Institute, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, and an industrial partner, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pharmaceutical Research Institute, Princeton, New Jersey.

Dr. Kinghorn
Dr. A. Douglas Kinghorn, Principal Investigator of the Program Project.

Program project grants from the National Institutes of Health are among the largest and most prestigious awards in biomedical research. Headed by a principal investigator, these multimillion dollar grants comprise several individual projects, each equivalent to R01 grant and led by a project leader. There are also a number of core components that support the overall research mission. This is the first time a lead investigator from the OSU College of Pharmacy has been awarded a NIH program project grant.

In his career to date, Dr. Kinghorn has discovered numerous biologically active small molecules from plants, in research projects on potential anticancer agents, cancer chemopreventives, oral microbials, and natural sweeteners. Since 1994, Dr. Kinghorn has served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Natural Products, which is co-published by the American Chemical Society and the American Society of Pharmacognosy. Dr. Kinghorn has been named as Fellow of five scientific or professional societies, as well as of the School of Pharmacy, University of London. In addition to overseeing the entire PPG, Dr. Kinghorn will lead one project and one of the core components.

Dr. Kinghorn and Research Scientists
Drs. Chin and Chai (Research Scientists), Carcache de Blanco (Co-P.I. of Project 1), and Kinghorn

Other members of the PPG team at OSU College of Pharmacy (Project 1: “Extraction, Dereplication, Isolation Chemistry, and Biological Evaluation”) are Dr. Esperanza J. Carcache de Blanco, Co-Project Leader, who has been Assistant Professor in the Divisions of Pharmacy Practice and Administration and Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy since 2005. Also involved are Research Scientists Heebyung Chai and Young-Won Kim. In the “Administrative/Budgeting, Biostatistics, and Data Integration”
Core, Drs. Frederick O. Cope and David Jarjoura, of the OSU Comprehensive Cancer Center, will serve as Co-Core Leaders.

 

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