May will soon be promoted to the very well-deserved position of Associate Professor with Tenure at UArizona. Congratulations from all of us!
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Our new publication "In Silico Targeting of the Long Noncoding RNA MALAT1" is online at https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsmedchemlett.1c00060
RNA is a difficult drug target, with only a few FDA-approved therapeutics. In this study, we used a virtual screen against MALAT1 and validated a compound that is specific to this structured RNA. This work demonstrates that in silico methods designed for protein targets can be used to target a structured RNA, expanding the available strategies for drug design for these targets.
Niloufar has defended her thesis "Two Different Approaches Towards Development of Therapeutics for Neurological Disorders". Her research focused on drug discovery for the neurodegenerative diseases Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and Multiple Sclerosis (MS).
The first approach was the use of small molecules obtained from virtual screening to target TDP-43 for ALS (published in ACS Chem Biol) and the second approach was to use SELEX to generate therapeutic aptamers for MS. Congratulations!!
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