Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Abhishek Sharma, assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology in the Schaefer School of Engineering and Science, was recently awarded a grant of $462,600 from the National Institutes for Health. His project, entitled “ Modular Approaches to Unusual Borylated Heterocycles Using Novel Acylborons and alpha-Hydroxy Borons as Enabling Tools,” will enable him to continue one of his primary research focuses of expanding the chemical space (novel structures) of medicinally important molecules—in this case, heterocyclic drugs.

The grant will enable the development of chemical synthesis methods to broaden the availability of molecular building blocks, ultimately providing access to more “chemical space” to develop new therapeutic agents.

Abhishek Sharma, assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, recently received a $1.55M Maximize Investigator’s Research Award (MIRA) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for his project "Novel Acylborons and Alpha-hydroxy Borons to Enable Modular, Regio- and Stereocontrolled Synthesis of Bioactive Molecules and Protein Conjugates." The project seeks to develop novel molecular building blocks that will significantly expand the chemical space for drug discovery and also provide new tools to functionalize and probe therapeutically important proteins.