News/Archives

7/3 – We are grateful to the NIH for new funding in the form of an R21 grant with Emily Derbyshire and her lab at Duke (https://www.derbylab.org/emily-derbyshire)!  We look forward to returning to a concerted effort in the malaria realm.

6/21/23 – Congratulations to group alumni Dr. Ravi Jadhav who has started a new position as Senior Scientist at Elanco Animal Health in Indiana.  We wish him the best of luck there!

5/1/23 – Congratulations to Joel on being awarded the Rutgers-NJMS Research Faculty of the Year award.

4/25/23 – Welcome to Master’s student Kush Jayank Pandya!  Kush will be working on our machine learning programs.

3/10/23 – Congratulations to Shao-Gang and Ricardo on granted U.S. Patent # 11,572,337: “ANTIBACTERIAL AGENTS: ARYLALKYLCARBOXAMIDO PHLOROGLUCINOLS”!

2/22/23 – Please check out the website for our NIH U19 antiviral accelerator: MAVDAresearch.org

11/17/22 : A belated congratulations to Alex who was awarded a travel scholarship to present at the 2022 SACNAS National Diversity in STEM (NDiSTEM) Conference, hosted in San Juan, Puerto Rico, October 27-29. She presented on her recent work in machine learning models for whole cell growth inhibition of Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

10/15/22 – Congratulations to Sam, Ricardo, and Xin on our recent invited review on KasA as a tuberculosis drug target. Please check it out: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9519891/

10/12/22 – Congratulations to Yong-Mo on his Angewandte Chemie paper entitled, “Redesign of Rifamycin Antibiotics to Overcome ADP-Ribosylation-Mediated Resistance.”

10/5/22 – Congratulations to Alex on her awards at the 2022 AGEP Student Success Conference – People Choice’s for Poster Presentation and 3rd Best Poster Presenter.

8/23/22 – Please check out this news item on our antibacterial agents targeting N. gonorrhoeae infection: “A promising new antibiotic for resistant gonorrhea” – https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-08-antibiotic-resistant-gonorrhea.html

8/17/22 – Congratulations to Shao-Gang, Nisha, Yong-Mo, and Joe on our new publication in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy entitled “A Novel Oral GyrB/ParE Dual Binding Inhibitor Effective against Multidrug-Resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Other High-Threat Pathogens.“  Please check it out at: https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/aac.00414-22

7/27/22 – Congratulations to Haseeb and Khadija on their publication in ACS Infectious Diseases on machine learning models to predict novel dual-stage antimalarials!  This is part of a collaboration with the lab of Emily Derbyshire at Duke University.  Please check it out at: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsinfecdis.2c00189

7/6 – Congratulations to lab alumnus Dr. Ashley Weng on starting a new position as a neuromuscular fellow at the Hospital for Special Surgery.  We are so proud of you, Ashley!

7/1 – Official today is Joel’s promotion to the rank of Professor.  This is a testament to the creativity and dedication of the lab’s members throughout the years! 

6/24/22 Congratulations to Nisha, Alex, Sam, Yong-Mo, Xin, and Jimmy on our Rickettsia paper being accepted for publication at ACS Infectious Diseases.  Please check it out: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acsinfecdis.2c00014

6/6/22 - Congratulations to former undergraduate researcher Cate Biava for beginning a new position at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab as a Rotational Mechanical Engineer! 

6/1/22 – It is great to see word getting out about the new NIH-funded antiviral drug accelerator program of which we are honored to be a part.  Read all about it: https://njbiz.com/65m-grant-funds-joint-academic-pharma-drug-accelerator/

6/1/22 – Group alumni on the move! Congratulations to Shao-Gang on heading to the West Coast as Scientist II, Process Chemistry at Nurix Therapeutics!

6/1/22 – Welcome to the lab James Mannix of Vassar College. James will spend the summer enjoying machine learning with the lab.

5/18/22 : We are thrilled to be a part of the new NIH funded Metropolitan AntiViral Drug Accelerator led by David Perlin and Charles Rice. Please follow this link to the NIH press release. More news to follow!

4/4/22: Undergraduate student, Ashni Kapadia, was recently accepted as a Lloyd C. Gardner Fellow for the 2022-2023 year. The fellowship gives accepted students a chance to deepen their awareness of global issues through policy, law, health, and academia. This will provide Ashni a chance to combine her passions for philosophy and healthcare.  Congratulations, Ashni!

3/18/22 – We are happy to announce new funding from the NIH in the form of an R21 grant to further our efforts at the interface of computation, chemistry, and biology.  This work is in collaboration with Connor Coley’s lab at MIT (https://coley.mit.edu/). We sincerely appreciate the continued support of the NIH for our research programs.

2/24/22 – Congratulations to former lab members Samer Daher and Pamela Barnett on their paper with the Andrade lab in the European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0223523422001155?via%3Dihub). We would like to take this opportunity to remember Rod Andrade and the amazing person and scientist that he was.  We were privileged to know him.

2/15/22 – Welcome to Srinivas Thadkapally to the lab as a new post-doctoral researcher!

1/18/22 – Welcome to new group member Pankaj Sharma who joins us as a post-doctoral scientist from Ohio State University!

1/5/22 – Congratulations to lab alumnus Steve Paget on accepting a position as Principal Scientist at Aprinoia Therapeutics in Cambridge, MA.  We will up to visit him soon for good conversation and cannoli!

10/4/21 – Congratulations to lab alumnus Shao-Gang on a collaborative paper with Sean Brady's lab being published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition English!

7/14 – Congratulations to the lab on receiving funding through an NIH U01 mechanism (Rutgers/NIH HealthAdvance Program).  This will help fund critical preclinical activities within our KasA program.  We are grateful to the NIH and Rutgers for their support of our research.

7/31 – We want to thank Xyler Ferraris for participating in our CSPP-funded summer research program. We wish him the best of luck as he returns to classes at Kean University.

8/10 – Congratulations to the lab on receiving funding through an NIH R01 mechanism.  This will help fund key in vitro and in vivo studies within our KasA program.  We are indebted to the NIH for their support of our research.

8/3/21 – Congratulations to Jimmy, Yong-Mo, Alex, Xin, and Sam on publication of our S. aureus Bayesian modeling/intrabacterial drug metabolism paper in ACS Infectious Diseases! 

7/29/21 – Congratulations to Yong-Mo, Kyle, Matt, and Jimmy on their paper with Shumin Tan's lab being published. Please check out "Targeting Mycobacterium tuberculosis responses to environmental cues for the development of effective antitubercular drugs" in PLoS Biology!

7/26 – We want to thank Leslie Furgus for joining for a summer research fellowship in the lab funded by the McNair Scholars program. We wish him a great rest of the summer and a fun return to Kean University in the fall.

6/1/21 – Welcome to the lab: Leslie Furgus from Kean University as a McNair scholar. Leslie is an undergraduate at Kean University.

6/7/21 – Congratulations to Ashni Kapadia on being named an LSAMP summer scholar (https://lsamp-nb.rutgers.edu). Ashni is an undergraduate at Rutgers.

6/8/21 – Welcome to the lab: Alex Escobar and Xyler Ferraris as Consortium of Scientists for Pandemic Preparedness Scholars (www.cs44pp.com).  Alex and Xyler are both undergraduates at Kean University.

6/18/21 – Congratulations to our former lab member Kavya Kannan who is graduating from Montgomery Township High School and then will be off to the University of Texas Dallas as a member of their National Merit Program. Good luck!

5/4/21 – Congratulations to Ravi, Ricardo, and Sam on the publication in PLoS ONE of their recent efforts with carbapenems and their utility to treat M. tuberculosis infection!

4/7/21 – We want to congratulate Haseeb on choosing MIT for graduate school in the fall. We know he will work with great scientists and have a lot of fun!"

3/1 The press release for the Consortium of Scientists for Pandemic Preparedness is out today and the web site is live (www.cs4pp.org). Joel is proud to be a co-founder! Please check this out and reach out to Joel directly if you wish to know more about the consortium. 

1/20/2021 – Congratulations to Haseeb for his first author paper in ACS Pharmacology and Translational Science describing the design, construction, and evaluation of random forest models to predict mouse snapshot PK!  By the way, Haseeb is currently applying to graduate schools and will be a valuable addition to any incoming class!

12/21 – Great to catch up with some group alumni! 

12/14/20 – Congratulations to the lab on a new paper on Mycobacterium tuberculosis KasA inhibitors published in ACS Omega.

11/13/20 – Congratulations to Catherine Biava on an excellent poster presentation this evening at the Rutgers Project SUPER (Science for Undergraduates: A Program for Excellence in Research)! 

7/17/20 – We are happy to announce publication of our paper with Bree Aldridge's lab at Tufts on MorphEUS.  Congratulations to Xin on his contributions.

7/13/20 - Congratulations to Janaina, Sam, Matt, Alex, Xin, and Madeleine on publication of our first paper with computational and chemical tools for studying Neisseria gonorrhoeae in Pharmaceutical Research.

5/13/20 - With all respect to the current pandemic, we are pleased to announce the acceptance of our paper entitled "Pruned Machine Learning Models to Predict Aqueous Solubility" in ACS Omega.  Congratulations to former lab members Alex, Daigo, and Jimmy!  The data sets for model building will be available soon on our new Data Sets, Models, and Methods page.

4/13 : Joel is honored to have received the Rutgers University – New Jersey Medical School Golden Apple Teaching Award for 2020. He also received this award in 2018.

3/22 - While our thoughts are with everyone battling COVID-19 on many fronts, we want to be grateful for our new publication in Cell Chemical Biology on recent advances in our KasA program. Daigo and Divya led the way to a preclinical drug candidate JSF-3285! 

3/19/20 – Amidst the sobering news of the COVID-19 pandemic, we respectfully take the time to announce new funding from the NIH to further our collaborative studies of tuberculosis diagnostics with the Jain laboratory at Johns Hopkins.  We are grateful for this support.

11/7/19 – Congratulations to Xin and Daigo who led the research published in Cell Chemical Biology.  JSF-2019, discovered by our TB Bayesian model and published in 2013 in Chemistry & Biology, was explored as to its compound optimization and mechanism of action. IBDM and spontaneous 2019-resistant mutants led us to a proposed mechanism for JSF-2019 involving NO• release and InhA inhibition which distinguishes this nitrofuran triazine from other nitroheterocycles such as delamanid and pretomanid.

11/5/19 – Congratulations to Xin and Alex who led the research published in ACS Infectious Diseases.  Utilizing a combination of our intrabacterial drug metabolism (IBDM) and computational (TB Bayesian model + high-throughput docking) platforms, they discovered a novel, whole-cell active InhA inhibitor whose mechanism is obscured by biotransformation/s within M. tuberculosis.

9/18/19 – Congratulations to the lab on new funding from the NIH in collaboration with Shumin Tan’s lab at Tufts.

7/25/19 – Congratulations to the lab on the acceptance of its paper with the Jain lab at Hopkins on the synthesis of ⁷⁶Br-bedaquiline and its use in PET imaging with a mouse model of M. tuberculosis infection.

5/4 - Congratulations to Xin on receiving a best poster award at the NCI Frontiers in Chemical Biology meeting!

5/1 – The lab is grateful to the NIH for the award of a new CETR grant!

4/1 – Congratulations to the lab on new funding from the NIH in collaboration with Sanjay Jain’s lab at Johns Hopkins.

4/3 – Congratulations to Dr. Jimmy Patel on successfully defending his thesis.  We wish him the best of luck returning for Y3 of medical school and encourage everyone to look for him to re-enter the research world in 2021!

4/15 – Congratulations to the lab on a new Ebola virus paper just accepted in Pharmaceutical Research.

9/20 - Congratulations to the lab on new funding from the DOD!

8/20 – Joel gave a talk today at the Boston ACS Meeting on recent advances within our Bayesian modeling program.

8/14 - Welcome to Janaina Cruz Pereira as a new post-doc in the group!

8/13 - Congratulations to the lab on an accepted paper in Tuberculosis on the antitubercular activity and mechanism of action of pyronaridine.

6/14/18 – Congratulations to Alex on his keynote review article "The A-Z of Zika drug discovery," which was just accepted for publication in Drug Discovery Today!

6/05/18 – Congratulations to Alex and Jimmy on their manuscript "Naive Bayesian models for Vero cell cytotoxicity," which was just accepted for publication in Pharmaceutical Research!

4/20/18 – Congratulations to Alex on our accepted paper in Molecular Pharmaceutics entitled "Comparing and validating machine learning models for Mycobacterium tuberculosis drug discovery."

3/06/18 – We are happy to announce a recently funded NIH STTR grant to further our antitubercular drug discovery studies. It was highlighted by the press and by an Inside NJMS article.

3/05/18 – Congratulations to Jimmy Patel!! Jimmy passed his qualifying exam with flying colors. Consequently, Jimmy is now officially an M.D. / Ph.D. Candidate.

1/24/18 – Congratulations to Alex for his contributions to a book chapter on Bayesian models in the recently published Computational Toxicology: Risk Assessment for Chemicals.

1/08/18 – Congratulations to Daigo, Alex, and former group members on their paper published at AAC! The manuscript is entitled "Novel pyrimidines as antitubercular agents."

9/14/17 – Congratulations to Tom, Alex, Shao-Gang, and Jimmy on their manuscript in ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters entitled “Addressing the Metabolic Stability of Antituberculars through Machine Learning.”

9/6/17 – Congratulations to Jimmy on his fellowship award through the T32 training program in Infection, Immunity, and Inflammation!

9/1/17 – We are very excited to welcome master’s student Tenesha Body and Rutgers undergraduates Matthew Sherwood and Ethan Morrison to the group!

8/28/17 – Congratulations to Daigo, Ricardo, and Mark on their joint paper with the Brady lab in ACS Infectious Diseases, entitled “Human microbiome inspired antibiotics with improved β-lactam synergy againstMDR Staphylococcus aureus."

8/28/2017 – Congratulations to Dr. Nisha Mittal on her new Senior Scientist position in the Analytical department at Kashiv Pharma.

8/14/2017 – Congratulations to Jimmy for having his bio. featured on the Rutgers Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology website, in the section with information for prospective students.

7/21/2017 – Congratulations to Shao-Gang on the acceptance of our manuscript in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, entitled "Mycobacterium tuberculosis L,D-transpeptidases are susceptible to inactivation by carbapenems and cephalosporins but not penicillins."

7/01/2017 – Congratulations to Joel (and to the lab, of course!) on the award of tenure!! The trip to Puerto Rico will have to wait, though; many more papers are yet to be written....

6/26/2017 – Congratulations to Ashley on starting a neurology residency at Tufts!!

6/16/2017 – Congratulations to Xin on his poster at the Boston Bacterial Meeting on our new results studying the intramycobacterial metabolism of antitubercular agents.

6/15/2017 – Congratulations to Jimmy on his talk at the Boston Bacterial Meeting on our recent efforts with methicillin-resistant S.aureus (MRSA).

6/09/2017 – Congratulations to Sam on his acceptance to the Rutgers-New Jersey Medical School. We know he will be an amazing M.D. in just a few years!

6/02/2017 – Congratulations to Divya on her new position as a Scientist at the Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI). We wish her the best of luck!

5/17/2017 – Congratulations to Divya on the acceptance of her paper in Trends in Microbiology, which outlines our thoughts on the intrabacterial metabolism of small molecule antituberculars.