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David M. Ferguson, Ph.D.
Center for Drug Design Advisory Committee
Professor, Department of Medicinal Chemistry
Fellow, Minnesota Supercomputing Institute for Digital Simulation and Advanced Computation
Contact information
Office: 7-125 Weaver-Densford Hall
Phone: 612-626-2601
Fax: 612-624-0139
E-mail: ferguson@umn.edu
Education
B.S., Bucknell University, 1983
Ph.D., University of South Florida, 1989
Background
David M. Ferguson is an Associate Professor of Medicinal Chemistry, a Fellow of the Supercomputing Institute for Digital Simulation and Advanced Computation, an Associate Director of the Center for Drug Design, and a graduate faculty member of several interdisciplinary programs across the University.
Research Summary
My lab is interested in the design and discovery of new therapeutics using both traditional structure-based drug design methods and high throughput screening techniques. For more than a decade, we have been leaders in the development and application of structural models of opioid receptors to understand the molecular basis of small molecule binding, selectivity, and receptor activation. Our lab uses molecular biology, chemical synthesis, and computational techniques to guide the design and discovery of small molecules with modified selectivity for the mu, delta, and kappa receptors and to explore the small molecule-mediated mechanism of receptor activation.
We have also become quite active in the design and synthesis of focused chemical libraries for screening against antiviral and anticancer targets as well as the design and development of high-throughput screens (HTS). Our lab has developed a chemical library with diverse biological activities. Compounds in this library have shown good activity against West Nile Virus (and related flaviviruses), herpes, and HIV, and reduce cell proliferation in a variety of cancers. Work is also performed to explore structure activity relationship (SAR) data among library members and to determine the mechanism of action of "hits" identified via HTS.
A detailed research description and publication list is also available.
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