In August I began graduate school at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN. This will be my second degree at Vanderbilt as I did my undergrad here as well. I’m studying to get my PhD in Chemical & Physical Biology, and the majority of my research will revolve around medicinal chemistry, drug discovery, and pharmacology.
Vanderbilt University Medical Center...I work in the big glass building on the right, Medical Research Building IV
As was expected, classes and lab have left me with very little free time. Every week is packed to the gills and by midweek the next week is filled up as well. So I thought it would be good to keep a running update of what I’m up to here so family and friends won’t feel wholly disconnected when I’m not calling or emailing very often.
My advisors are Drs. Craig Lindsley and P. Jeffrey Conn. Both are former Merck researchers who broke away to set up their own drug discovery program in an academic environment. What’s resulted is the Vanderbilt Program in Drug Discovery, one of the most drug research consortiums in academia. The VPDD now consists of many more labs than Lindsley’s and Conn’s but those are the labs of which I’m a member.
I’ve worked for Craig since undergrad, he’s essentially the reason I decided to go to graduate school. His lab focuses mainly on the medicinal chemistry side of things while Jeff’s lab focuses more on cell based assays and, eventually, in vivo mouse and rat studies. Check out the links to their lab websites above if you’re curious.
Currently I’m working on finding an antagonist for the muscarinic acetylcholine receptor subtype M4. If found, such a molecule would have the possibility of alleviating symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease, seizures, and other dystonias. This project may end up becoming my primary thesis, but it’s too early to tell.
I hope this will be a start to some regular updates on what I’m doing in research and in life around Nashville. Right now I’m off to prepare about 40 compounds for a cellular assay, keep your fingers crossed for good data!
