Congratulations to Whitney Laboratory Associate Professor of Chemistry Dr. Sandra Loesgen and Assistant Professor of Biology Dr. James Strother for being awarded the inaugural UF Chemistry Gator Angel Wing Award!
Gator Angel Wing Awards are possible through the generous support of Dr. Nicholas Conti (Ph.D. in Chemistry with Bill Jones, UF, 1987) and Amy Fox Conti to recognize, promote, and incentivize faculty who are entrepreneurially minded, and support their efforts to bring innovative research ideas from the laboratory to the marketplace.
The award funds research to enable an angel round of financing of a start-up company. Dr. Loesgen and Dr. Strother have proposed to develop their analgesic leads into preclinical drug candidates (Bunnell et al 10.1016/j.bbr.2025.115526).
Specifically, they have discovered a new fungal derived alkaloid named atheliapyrrolidine that acts as an agonist for the human serotonin receptor (5-HT2A) with nanomolar activity (US Patent App. 63460514). This agonist has potential for the treatment of multiple psychotic disorders, including chronic pain, schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, major depressive disorder, Autism, and PTSD. They plan to test its toxicity and early pharmacokinetics and dynamics in vitro, and the funds will enable ADME and PK/PD studies in vivo in rodents. Additionally, in early discovery stages, they have identified synthetic benzothiazine scaffolds that exhibit potent analgesic activity in their zebrafish model, here the patent application and early preclinical assessment are proposed.