Medicinal Chemistry’s Yan Zhang: Research renewed by NIDA at $1.9 million
VCU School of Pharmacy associate professor Yan Zhang’s NIH National Institute on Drug Abuse grant, “Non-Peptide Mu Opioid Receptor Selective Antagonists,” has been renewed for another five years with funding of $1.9 million.
Zhang is the principal investigator for this multidisciplinary research project, which began in his lab at the Department of Medicinal Chemistry in 2005. The project initially was funded by NIDA in 2008 for five years at a total cost of $1.6 million.
During the sixth year, a no-cost extension period, Zhang said his team worked diligently with NIDA to secure the new funding, which runs from March of this year through January 2020.
The main goal of the research is to create novel compounds that have the potential to become new therapeutic agents in treating neurological and substance abuse disorders such as drug abuse and addiction, stimulant abuse and opioid-induced gastrointestinal adverse effects. Zhang’s lab is working to develop novel mu opioid receptor ligands as pharmacological probes to understand the mechanisms of action of opioid receptors, particularly the mu subtype, in these disorders.
“Multidisciplinary grants are currently the ‘Holy Grail’ in research and the wave of the future,” said Richard A. Glennon, chairman of the Department of Medicinal Chemistry. “Dr. Yan Zhang and others in our department and school can attest to this. … His grant includes faculty from several departments within the School of Pharmacy and schools, e.g., the School of Medicine.”
During the first funding period, Zhang worked closely with professor of medicinal chemistry Richard Westkaemper (now retired) and William Dewey, chairman of the School of Medicine’s Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, as well as associate professor of pharmacology and toxicology Dana Selley. In the next five years, Zhang said, the team will grow with the addition of Hamid Akbarali, professor of pharmacology and toxicology; and Jürgen Venitz, professor of pharmaceutics in the School of Pharmacy.
“[Zhang] is to be applauded in his efforts to assemble such a multidisciplinary field of expert people,” said Glennon. “VCU should also be applauded for having all the required expertise ‘in-house.’ ”
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