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• 1 media/Wave5 - Blue-SURF-New.jpg 2020-09-24T21:56:36+00:00 Dr. Sherif Elshahawi 6 Pharmacy plain 2020-10-16T20:00:45+00:00
  
  Email: elshahawi@chapman.edu
  Website:  https://www.chapman.edu/our-faculty/sherif-elshahawi
  
  College: School of Pharmacy
  
  Overview of scholarly research/creative activity:  The major goal of my lab is drug discovery and development. Our approach utilizes natural products compounds and enzymes.
  
  Specific projects working on:  1-Drug development and diversification using biocatalysis. Our lab modifies the chemical structures of current FDA-approved drugs to improve their biological activities and/ or pharmacokinetic properties. We use recombinant enzymes to perform chemical modifications on drugs. We also engineer the active site of the enzyme to improve its properties. Students in this project learn enzyme overproduction and purification, protein engineering, and medicinal chemistry. Furthermore, students gets hands on experience on HPLC, NMR, HR-MS and FPLC. 2-Drug discovery from microbial sources. Soil microorganisms have provided many FDA-approved drugs. My lab collects soil samples from unique ecological niches within California. These samples are processed in the lab to cultivate a class of bacteria that is known to produce biological active compounds. The samples are screened in different high-throughput biological activities and analyzed for the production of unique drug-leads compounds. Students in this project learn microbiological cultivation techniques, biological screening and natural products chemistry. Student gets hands on experience on shaker incubators and HPLC
  
  Number of students looking to work with: 3-4
  Time commitment for students:  at least 8 hrs a week
  When students are needed: Fall 2020, Interterm 2021, Spring 2021, Summer 2021
  Requirements for students who work with you:  hard worker and enthusiastic and willing to learn
  What would students be expected to do​​​​​​: lab experiments