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!!
The National Academy of Inventors (NAI) was founded in 2010 to recognize and encourage inventors, enhance the visibility of academic technology and innovation, encourage the disclosure of intellectual property, educate and mentor innovative students, and translate the inventions of its members to benefit society. NAI Senior Members are active faculty, scientists and administrators from NAI Member Institutions who have demonstrated remarkable innovation producing technologies that have brought, or aspire to bring, real impact on the welfare of society. They also have growing success in patents, licensing and commercialization.
May is the founder of Regenerix, LLC, where she is moving forward compounds for therapeutics to treat neurodegenerative diseases. She is also the co-founder of Cliacept, Inc., a predominantly minority women-owned company, founded by the first cohort of students from her innovative course, Designing Drugs: From Chemistry to Cure.
Congratulations May!
We have a new paper under review! Our laboratory developed a novel cell line to model Pontocerebellar Hypoplasia type 1B (PCH1B) from stem cells obtained from a patient’s blood (and heterozygous normal parents). In this paper, we show that chemical induction of disease by ERD03 (previously published in ACS Chemical Biology) recapitulates many of the hubs and nodes found in the proteomic data from the patient with the disease.
Check out the preprint at iScience