Theodore Tong, PharmD, is a Professor of Pharmacy Practice, Pharmacology, and Toxicology with the College of Pharmacy at the University of Arizona (UA), Tucson Arizona. He is the inaugural holder of the R. Ken Coit Endowed Chair in the College. He also holds an appointment as Professor, with the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health. Dr.

Degree: PhD Student
Program: Pharmacology and Toxicology
Track: Pharmacology and Toxicology
Faculty Mentor: Xinxin Ding, PhD
Year Enrolled: 2020
Training Grant: T32 Pre-doctoral Trainee 

Degree: PhD Candidate
Program: Pharmaceutical Sciences
Track: Drug Discovery and Development
Faculty Mentor: James Galligan, PhD
Year Enrolled: 2021
Training Grant: T32 Pre-doctoral Trainee

Todd Vanderah has worked in the area of Neuropharmacology for over 20 years, resulting in 165 peer-reviewed publications and continuous funding from the National Institute of Health. His work focuses on identifying novel molecular targets on pain pathways in order to attenuate acute and chronic pain while reducing unwanted side effects. Recently he has investigated the use of an Angiotensin fragment that inhibit chronic inflammation while inhibiting inflammation-induced cognitive impairment.Dr.

Alejandro Vazquez, PharmD, is an Assistant Professor in the Pharmacy Practice and Science Department. He completed a residency in Ambulatory Care and academia with The University of Florida College of Pharmacy and Gulf Coast Area Health Education Centers. He also received a teaching certificate from the same program. Previously, he practiced chronic disease management in patients at the Banner University Medical Center Internal Medicine Clinic.

Dr. Velma joined the University of Arizona in January 2021 as a Postdoctoral Research Associate where he actively involved in the SARS-CoV-2, Triple-negative Breast Cancer (TNBC), AD and Type 2 diabetes (T2D) drug discovery projects. For the last 10 years, he involved in various lead discovery projects in the field of medicinal chemistry and also developed efficient methodologies for the construction of organic frameworks, C-C, C-N, and C-O bond formation reactions which allow new synthetic routes for the preparation of bioactive heterocyclic molecules.

Dr. Ali Veltri is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology on the Phoenix Biomedical Campus, where she provides instruction within the College of Pharmacy. Dr. Veltri has a research background in drug discovery and extensive teaching experience across both the basic and clinical sciences.

Degree: PhD Student
Program: Pharmacology and Toxicology
Track: Pharmacology and Toxicology
Faculty Mentor: Rick Schnellmann, PhD
Year Enrolled: 2021

Dr. Wang is an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, College of Pharmacy, University of Arizona. He works in the field of cancer biology, molecular biology, toxicology, pharmacology and drug discovery. He is interested in RNA binding proteins under physiological and pathological conditions.

Areas of Research:

RNA binding proteins and RNA metabolism
RNA binding proteins in cancer
Environmental factor related carcinogenesis

As Co-Director of the Arizona Center for Drug Discovery and professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Dr. Wang is responsible for advancing the mission of drug discovery at the UA Health Sciences, main campus and the Phoenix Biomedical Campus. By uniting the UA’s state-of-the-art facilities, expertise and resources, he will help facilitate drug discovery and development while enhancing translational research collaboration. Dr.

Alzheimer’s disease is the most prevalent form of dementia characterized by neuronal loss in the neocortex and hippocampus. Parkinson's disease is the second most common neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer's disease due to the progressive loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra. Frontotemporal dementia is the second most common form of early-onset dementia caused by neuronal loss in the frontal and temporal cortex. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is the most common motor disease characterized by progressive motor neuron degeneration in brain stem and spinal cord.

Degree: PhD Student

Program: Pharmaceutical Sciences

Track: Pharmaceutics and Pharmacokinetics

Faculty Mentor: Kenry

Year Enrolled: 2024

Degree: PhD Student
Program: Pharmacology and Toxicology
Track: Pharmacology and Toxicology
Faculty Mentor: Hongxu Ding, PhD
Year Enrolled: 2022

Dr. Watts is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, and managing Co-Director of the Genomics lab within the SWEHSC Omics Facility Core. Dr. Watts facilitates genomics research by SWEHSC members through consultation on experimental design and technology choice. He has over 20 years of experience in research on the environmental effects of epigenetics, genomics, and the microbiome. Dr. Watts has been collaborating with SWEHSC investigators for over 20 years on genomics projects resulting in over 20 collaborative authorships.

Dr. Wheeler has over 25 years of experience in research in designing algorithms, statistical models, and software for problems motivated by biological data. Projects in his research group range from statistical modeling of biological sequence families, to text indexing and bounded search algorithms, to low-level software optimization, to Deep Neural Networks and Natural Language Processing and related Machine Learning methods, to development of databases and accompanying web services.

William Wheeler was the director of national accounts at Eli Lilly and Company from 1982 to 1997.  He worked at Eli Lilly his entire professional life, beginning as an associate in 1965. William holds a bachelor’s degree in pharmacy from the University of Arizona and a master’s of business administration from Arizona State University. He has served on the Advisory Board for the National Employers Group. William was an officer in the U.S. Air Force Medical Service Corps from 1962 to 1965. 





 

Georg Wondrak, PhD, is a professor of pharmacology and toxicology within the R. Ken Coit College of Pharmacy. 

Awards:

• R Ken Coit College of Pharmacy Basic Sciences Teacher of the Year 2023
  • Spring 2023
• 2020 University of Arizona College of Pharmacy Dr. James R. Halpert Faculty Research Award
  • COP, Fall 2020

Redox Drug Discovery Targeting Skin Cancer and Solar Photodamage

Degree: PhD Student

Program: Pharmaceutical Sciences

Track: Pharmaceutics and Pharmacokinetics

Faculty Mentor: Jianqin Lu

Year Enrolled: 2023

Degree: PhD Student
Program: Pharmacology and Toxicology
Track: Pharmacology and Toxicology
Faculty Mentor: Qin Chen, PhD
Year Enrolled: 2019
Training Grant: T32 Pre-doctoral Trainee

The Xiong lab is focused on the structure-based design of bioactive molecules to modulate disease-causing proteins or genes. We use modern molecular biology tools to develop biochemical, biophysical, and cellular assays to screen and optimize molecules for various therapeutic targets. Our projects also heavily utilize X-ray crystallography and computational modeling to guide molecule design. Two novel molecules developed from this pipeline successfully entered human clinical trials for treating advanced breast cancer (NCT03201913: Xiong R., et al., J Med Chem.