Previous Seed Grant Winners
Where are they now?
In 2001, Peter Tonge of the Department of Chemistry was awarded a seed grant for her proposal, "Inhibitors of Human Fatty Acid Biosynthesis as Putative Anticancer Drugs."
This Seed Grant was to study the inhibition of the human fatty acid synthase enzyme in collaboration with Dr. John Shanklin in the Biology Department at BNL. Dr. Shanklin is an expert on enzymes that utilize fatty acids as substrates. His advice and input into the ongoing projects in my lab has been of tremendous benefit.
While the team does not currently have funding on the design of inhibitors that target the human fatty acid synthase (the subject of the Seed Grant), they have a related project on the biosynthesis of fatty acids in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the pathogen that causes tuberculosis. Additionally, they have made good progress on this project and Dr. Tonge's NIH RO1 proposal on TB drug discovery was recently renewed. While Dr. Shanklin is not directly involved in this project, he has continued to be an important source of advice for SBU students since the seed grant was funded.