May 14, 2021
Dr. Xiaodong Wang, a Research Professor within the Center for Integrative Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery, and its Director of Medicinal Chemistry was awarded over $1.5 million from NIH along with her collaborator, Douglas Graham, PhD of Emory University. Both Wang and Graham have been working along with Dr. Shelley Earp of Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and Dr. Stephen Frye of the CICBDD. This grant will support them to develop novel, potent, and selective TYRO3 inhibitors. TYRO3 is a member of the TAM (TYRO3, AXL, MERTK) family of receptor tyrosine kinases and is a potential therapeutic target in a wide variety of human tumors. Here, they propose to develop novel, potent, and selective TYRO3 inhibitors and validate their biochemical and functional activities in TYRO3-dependent tumor xenograft models and immune-competent syngeneic cancer models.