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What do chemical warfare agents and anticancer drugs have in common?

Dr. Don Warner will present at the department seminar this Friday, September 3rd, 2021.

Abstract:

“For several years now, Don and his students have sought to combat various cancer types using a variety of approaches. Our efforts include altering naturally occurring anthracyclines to render them less cardiotoxic and more potent, synthesizing small molecules that inhibit the signaling of a protein thought to be responsible for tumor metastasis, and synthesizing cytotoxic anticancer agents. This talk will focus on our efforts to understand the mechanism by which synthetic AZMs form DNA interstrand crosslinks and DNA-protein crosslinks, two adducts that have not been previously observed for this class of anticancer agents. The talk will show the relationship between mustard gases and AZMs, along with our approach to test our proposed hypothesis for AZM-facilitated DNA alkylation.”