Recent Pharmacology Dissertations
List of students who have recently defended their Ph.D. Dissertation in Pharmacology, along with their dissertation title.
8/28/24 Zaritza Petrova - "Understanding how kinase domain interactions contribute to dimerization and activation of receptor tyrosine kinases" (Advisor: Mark Lemmon)
6/19/24 Sam Dorry - "Investigating the role of MAP Kinase Phosphatase-5 in fibrosis and TGF-beta signaling" (Advisor: Anton Bennett)
6/15/24 Christina Papini - "A computational and structural-guided approach to design novel SARS-CoV-2 antivirals" (Advisor: Karen Anderson)
5/28/24 Curtis (Zunyu) He - "Unravelling PI5P4K's immunomodulatory role in lung cancer tumor microenvironment --- a druggable target to promote anti- tumor immunity" (Advisor: Ya Ha)
3/14/24 Jianan Zhang - “Structural and Biophysical Regulation of the Receptor Tyrosine Kinases dROS1 and ErbB3” (Advisor: Daryl Klein)
03/10/2023 Joel Sexton - Disentangling Sequence Constraints on the Coflin N-terminal Phosphorylation Site (Advisor: Ben Turk)
Mar 2023 Iris van Alderwerelt van Rosenburgh - Kinase Dynamics Underlie Mechanisms of Sensitivity and Resistance of EGFR with LUAD Mutations to Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors (Advisor: Mark Lemmon)
Feb 2023 Zechen Wang - Tackling FGFR Fusion-Positive Cancers with a Novel Synergistic Combination of FGFR and HDAC Inhibitors (Advisor: Karen Anderson)
Mar 2022 Chun Hu - Understanding distinct roles of EGFR family mutations in different cancers (Advisor: Mark Lemmon)
Feb 2022 Michael Bond - Towards Tumor-Cell Specific Proteolysis Targeting Chimeras: Identification of first-in-class degraders of oncogenic KRASG12C, DcpS, and MAGE-A3 (Advisor: Craig Crews)
Jan 2022 Joshua Sheetz - The Dead Receptor Paradox: Insights into Receptor Tyrosine Kinases with Intracellular Pseudokinase Domains (Advisor: Mark Lemmon)
Jan 2022 Joseph Fowler - Inflammatory stress disrupts endothelial cell cholesterol homeostasis and increases SREBP2-dependent gene expression to amplify the acute inflammatory response (Advisor: Bill Sessa)
Aug 2021 Courtney Smith - Regulation of TIM-3 by Phosphatidylserine (Advisor: Mark Lemmon)
Jul 2021 Brian (Guangda) Shi - Proteome-wide screening for mitogen-activated protein kinase docking motifs and interactors (Advisor: Ben Turk)
03/02/2021 Eunice Cho - PPP6C Regulation of ERK Signaling in Melanoma (Advisor: Ben Turk)
02/15/2021 Ban Edani - Structural Elucidation of the cis-prenyltransferase NgBR/DHDDS Complex Reveals Novel Insights in Regulation of ProteinGlycosylation (Advisor: Bill Sessa)
12/14/2020 Shanique Alabi - Mutant-selective Degradation by BRAF- targeting PROTACs (Advisor: Craig Crews)
11/20/2020 Valerie Su - Serine Phosphorylation of ICAP1 Inhibits its Nuclear Accumulation (Advisor: David Calderwood)
11/04/2020 Vincent Duong - Evaluation of NRTI-mediated toxicity through the human mitochondrial polymerase PrimPol (Advisor: Karen Anderson)
08/04/2020 Victor Ruiz - Computer-Aided Discovery of New Inhibitors of C. hominis Thymidylate Synthase-Dihydrofolate Reductase (Advisor: Karen Anderson)
01/15/2020 Keith Weise - Regulation of activity and localization of the budding yeast kinases Kin1 and Kin2 (Advisor: Ben Turk)
01/10/2020 Eric Rosenberg - Perturbing the activities of chemokine receptors CXCR4 and CXCR5 (Advisor: Elias Lolis)
11/25/2019 Yasmin Kadry - Biochemical and functional characterization of kindlin interactions (Advisor: David Calderwood)
09/23/2019 Ashley Sizer - O-GlcNAc transferase-dependent regulation of serum response factor and vascular smooth muscle cell phenotype (Advisor: Kathleen Martin)
03/01/2019 Zachary Gannam - Exploring the allosteric inhibition of a MAPK phosphatase linked to Duchenne muscular dystrophy (Advisor: Karen Anderson)
01/24/19 William Gray - Nucleoid Size Scaling and Intracellular Organization of Translation Across Bacteria (Advisor: Christine Jacobs-Wagner)
01/14/19 Lee Ying - Epigentic Approaches to Understanding Adipogenesis, and Translational Approaches to Treating Obesity (Advisor: Kathleen Martin)
10/05/18 Molly Ryan - Understanding the Consequences of Oncogenic FGFR Mutations on Drug Resistance, Signaling, and Tumorigenesis (Advisor: Karen Anderson)
09/27/18 Daniel Iwamoto - Structural basis of the filamin A actin-binding domain interaction with F-actin (Advisor: David Calderwood)
09/12/18 Lie Ma - Elucidation of the Activated State of Fibroblast Growth Factor Receptor (Advisor: Joseph Schlessinger)
09/10/18 David E. Puleo -Targeting the Mutant JAK2 V617F Tyrosine Kinase by Small Molecules that Bind to its Pseudokinase Domain (Advisor: Joseph Schlessinger)
03/01/18 Tomoaki Sasaki - Characterization of APOBEC3 Family Proteins as Potent DNA Mutators in Human Cancers (Advisor: Karen Anderson)
02/12/18 Elizabeth Mo - Augmentors are in vivo ligands to the ALK family of receptor tyrosine kinases: function and evolution (Advisor: Joseph Schlessinger)
09/26/17 Chad Miller - Comprehensive Profiling of a Kinase Family Defines Features Essential for Selective Substrate Targeting (Advisor: Ben Turk)
11/30/2016 Amelia Luciano - The Role of Akt1 & Clock S845 phosphorylation in Circadian Regulated Transcriptional Rhythms (Advisor: Bill Sessa)
09/23/2016 Allison Goldberg - An Exosite Required for Efficient Targeting of MAP Kinase Kinases by the Metalloproteinase Antrax Lethal Factor (Advisor: Ben Turk)
08/12/2016 Yagmur Muftuoglu - Mechanisms of substrate specificity and insights into activation of phosphatidylionositol phosphate kinases (Advisor: Ya Ha)
06/02/2016 Andrea Mislak - Insights into the Activity, Resistance, and Toxicity of Antivirals Targeting HIV Reverse Transcriptase (Advisor: Karen Anderson)
02/23/16 Phillip Murray - Discovery and Characterization of Ligands for the Receptor Tyrosine Kinase ALK: AUG-alpha, AUG-beta and Heparin (Advisor: Joseph Schlessinger)
12/10/15 Yifei Yang - Molecular basis for Polycystin- 2 channel regulation and assembly its C-terminal tail (Advisor: Barbara Ehrlich)
12/08/15 Jacqueline Heiss - Prion Protein Regulates Amyloid- Beta Dendritic Spine Pathology in a Mouse model of Alzheimer's Disease (Advisor: Stephen Strittmatter)
10/15/15 Celeste Greer - Histone Deacetylases Positively Regulate Transcriptional Elongation (Advisor: Tae Hoon Kim)
2/24/15 Oriana Fisher - Structural studies of Cerebral Cavernous Malformations 2 (CCM2) reveal the basis for its interactions with protein binding (Advisor: Titus Boggon)