Research Enterprise Newsletter - March 2007: Faculty News
Conn wins two awards for drug discovery work
Jeff Conn, PhD, director of the Pharmacology Department's Program in Translational Neuropharmacology and the Vanderbilt Institute of Chemical Biology's Program in Drug Discovery, has received two major awards from the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET), one of the oldest and most prestigious science organizations. The awards are:
- The 2007 Pharmacia-ASPET Award for Experimental Therapeutics, which recognizes outstanding research that has had, or potentially will have, a major impact on the pharmacological treatment of disease
- An ASPET-Astellas Award in Translational Pharmacology, which recognizes novel pharmacologic approaches or technologies that may offer significant advances in clinical medicine
Mundy presents ORNL Distinguished Lecture
Gregory R. Mundy, MD, VUMC's John A. Oates Chair in Translational Medicine, presented a lecture on "Drugs for Diseases of Bone Remodeling" at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) on March 1. As part of ORNL's Distinguished Lecture series, Mundy discussed experimental approaches to identifying new therapies for bone disease.
As director of the newly established Center for Bone Biology, Mundy's research focuses on the bone loss that accompanies aging (osteoporosis), and common malignancies that involve bone, such as breast and prostate cancer, as well as the mechanisms by which they cause bone destruction.
Levitt to receive Cozzarelli Prize for PNAS article
Pat Levitt, PhD, professor of Pharmacology and director of the Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development, will receive an award from the editorial board of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences for his article titled "A genetic variant that disrupts MET transcription is associated with autism."
The award recognizes recently published PNAS papers of outstanding scientific excellence and originality. It was named the Cozzarelli Prize after the late PNAS editor-in-chief Nick Cozzarelli, whose lab motto was "blast ahead" and who encouraged researchers to push the envelope of discovery. Levitt's article was tapped for the prize as an excellent example of those qualities.
Levitt will receive the prize at the National Academy of Sciences Awards Ceremony on April 27 in Washington, DC. Coauthors on the winning paper are Daniel B. Campbell, James S. Sutcliffe, Philip J. Ebert, Roberto Militerni, Carmela Bravaccio, Simona Trillo, Maurizio Elia, Cindy Schneider, Raun Melmed, Roberto Sacco, Antonio M. Persico, and Pat Levitt.
