UF college of Pharmacy recently issued the following announcement.
Hendrik Luesch’s discovery and complete chemical and pharmacological characterization of a novel marine natural product that can potentially fight cancer has earned him a 2021
UF Innovate Award. Luesch and six other University of Florida faculty were honored at the 4th Annual Standing InnOvation Event in Gainesville’s Innovation District on Oct. 26.
Standing InnOvation recognizes UF innovators who have disclosed, licensed or optioned a technology in the previous fiscal year. UF Innovate selected Luesch’s discovery from
among nearly 300 inventions disclosed in fiscal year 2021.
Luesch, Ph.D., a professor and chair of medicinal chemistry and the Debbie and Sylvia DeSantis Chair in Natural Products Drug Discovery and Development in the UF College of
Pharmacy, named his anti-cancer compound class Gatorbulin. It pays tribute to the UF researchers, including his team members Susan Matthew, Qi-Yin Chen and Ranjala
Ratnayake, and global partners who led the way to its discovery and characterization.
Gatorbulin-1, the first compound class member, originated from cyanobacteria blooms found off the Florida coast near Fort Lauderdale. UF researchers discovered the novel
marine natural product bound to a new site of tubulin, an important target for cancer drugs. Natural products targeting tubulin have provided the basis for several anti-cancer drugs
approved by the Food and Drug Administration, including paclitaxel and vincristine.
For decades, cancer researchers have explored new ways to modify the protein’s function and dynamics by developing compounds that target one of tubulin’s six binding
sites. Luesch and other UF researchers discovered Gatorbulin actually targets a seventh pharmacological site.
Identifying and fully characterizing this new tubulin-targeting compound and the new druggable binding site took years of work. Luesch, who is also director of the Center for
Natural Products, Drug Discovery and Development and a member of the UF Cancer Center, said the compound has unique structural features and drug-like character, and can be
reproduced in the lab through his teams’ scalable chemical synthesis, all of which additionally distinguishes Gatorbulin from other molecules and drugs targeting tubulin.
Original source can be found here.
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