Medicinal Chemistry Collaborative

The Department of Chemistry made an outstanding showing at the 2017 American Society of Pharmacognosy (ASP) National Meeting in Portland Oregon this August. What is pharmacognosy, you ask?  This is a term for research related to natural products, such as the anti-cancer drug taxol, which comes from the pacific yew tree. A total of 20 UNCG students, faculty, and research scientists attended the conference, including six undergraduate students and two masters students. UNCG yellow and gold made quite a splash at the poster session, where attendees could not help but notice that there were more posters from UNCG than any other single institution.  Many of our colleagues also commented on the excellent quality of the posters and presentations our students gave.  Well done everyone!  Funds to support the travel to this conference were provided by travel awards from the ASP (to UNCG PhD students Lindsay Caesar and Emily Britton) and from research grants from the National Institutes of Health.  Attending conferences of this nature can be a life-changing event for students.  As an example of this, we interacted with UNCG graduate Joseph Egan at this year’s conference.  Joe is currently pursuing a PhD in natural products at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia.  He met his current research advisor at an ASP meeting in 2015, and it was at this same meeting that he was inspired to pursue a PhD in natural products.