Tony Davis
Assistant Professor, Pharmaceutical Sciences
Background
Tony D. Davis joined the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at °®¶¹´«Ã½ in 2020. He received a PhD in pharmacology from Cornell University, under the guidance of Derek Tan, where he developed a systematic quantitative platform to predict drug permeability and efflux in bacteria and to guide the design of cell-permeable inhibitors of bacterial non-ribosomal peptide adenylation domains as potential antibiotics. Following his graduate studies, Davis joined the group of Michael Burkart in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego, as a National Institutes of Health-National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIH-NIGMS) Institutional Research and Academic Career Development Award (IRACDA) Postdoctoral Fellow. His postdoctoral research employed synthetic chemistry, biochemistry and structural biology to probe transient protein-protein interactions in primary and secondary metabolic pathways. His current research (funded by an NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award) involves interrogating the molecular basis of substrate and protein recognition of natural product methyltransferase enzymes with potential implications for drug discovery, biocatalysis and combinatorial biosynthesis. Additional research interests include the development of potential therapeutic compounds for infectious diseases, cancer and neurological disorders.
Education
- Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of California, San Diego
- PhD in Pharmacology, Cornell University
- BS in Biochemistry, Xavier University of Louisiana
Research Interests
- Natural products biosynthesis
- Infectious diseases
- Neurological disorders
- Drug discovery and development
- Chemical biology
- Synthetic and medicinal chemistry
Awards
- NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Career Development Award
- Institutional Research and Academic Career Development Award (IRACDA) Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of California, San Diego
- University of California, San Diego Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Postdoctoral Scholar