“We’re disease agnostic,” says Lindsey James, assistant professor in the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy’s division of chemical biology and medicinal chemistry. “We try to develop molecules and then hand them off to anyone that’s willing to test them. … We’re happy being able to make an impact in any disease area.”
James explains her lab’s process during the latest installment of the video series “North Carolina Innovators You Should Know,” hosted by Eshelman Innovation Executive Director John Bamforth.
James’s lab works on promising proteins that have not been tackled by the pharmaceutical industry. “There’s often preliminary genetic data suggesting that if we drug those targets, there might be a beneficial outcome,” says James, who serves as director of chemical biology for the pharmacy school’s Center for Integrative Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery.
Eshelman Innovation has provided critical support for this early-stage research, she says. The most straightforward way is providing funding for research projects. In addition, “they’ve been wonderful in connecting me with people in biotech companies that I’m able to partner with to take my work to a level that otherwise I might not have been able to do in a small academic setting.”
