•PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen) Test for early detection of Prostate Cancer – IP owned by RPCI – receive royalties •Avonex – most widely prescribed drug for relapsing MS – first treatment shown to slow progress of the disease – approved in 1996 - developed by Larry Jacobs group – sold by Biogen ($0.5B per year) – WNY/UB doesn’t receive any direct funds from the sale of Avonex •Nicorette Gum – Developed by professor doing decompression studies on sailors who needed to keep taking a break to smoke a cigarette, so developed this to enable him to finish his decompression studies – do we make anything?? •Tarantula Venom – prevent atrial fibrillation, which is a leading cause of death following a heart attack – so far, works for rabbits (Fred Sachs) •Developed and patented a high-throughput search process for structural biology that tests 1536 “chemical cocktails” to enhance method of crystallization.

•Mention Paras Prasad’s Institute on Lasers and Photonics – looking at novel drug delivery systems

•Mention Paras Prasad’s Institute on Lasers and Photonics – looking at novel drug delivery systems

•(has 4 heme groups that combine 4 oxygens) – usually find either all or none of hemes bound with O2 •Want to know after bind a single oxygen why affinity for binding other oxygens go up •During simulation – oxygen is bound to lower heme and then see that phenyl group rotates out of the way, which allows another O2 to bind to the top heme •Bottom line is that binding of an Oxygen to lower Phe group produces a structural change at the other Heme location – provides greater access to oxygen

•Genes regulate proteins (determine which proteins are produced and when) and it is proteins that regulate all the cellular functions in our body •For example, Vancomycin works by interfering with a protein’s ability to repair damaged cell walls.  So when a healthy protein develops a leision in its cell wall, it produces a protein that fixes the hole.  Vancomycin interferes with the ability of the protein to do its job so that the leision becomes fatal for the bacteria that we want to kill.  That is, proteins control everything in our bodies.

In collaboration with Axelsen’s lab, Loll’s lab is undertaking structural studies of vancomycin-ligand complexes, with the long term goal being the design of novel forms of the antibiotic with enhanced activity against currently resistant bacteria.   - from Loll’s Web site. “Vancomycin resistance is a serious threat.  We can’t overcome it by simply synthesizing a thousand variants of the drug until we find one that works against the resistant bugs (because we can’t even synthesize vancomycin, let alone lots of variants).  Therefore, a structure-based approach holds the greatest promise, wherein we use the structural information about how  the drug recognizes the ligand coupled with computational methods to predict which variant(s) might actually work.”  - Pat Loll

•Example on Vancomycin is a good example – drug that interacts with particular protein to keep cell wall from healing •Developed modifications of Vanco to make it bind more effectively to protein produced by bacteria