Investigational New Drug Pipeline
We are a multi-disciplinary team of computational, experimental, and clinical scientists with a shared goal of evaluating antiviral drug candidates to generate non-clinical investigational new drug (IND)-enabling data that can ultimately support IND filing.
Lark L. Coffey, PhD
Principal Investigator
Don Francis
Associate Professor
University of California, Davis
Dr. Coffey has 21 years of experience studying the transmission dynamics, evolution, and pathogenesis of mosquito-borne viruses. Research in her laboratory, which is based in the School of Veterinary Medicine, focuses on viral genetic mechanisms of emergence that alter virus-host interactions, with a goal of finding ways to interrupt transmission to reduce human disease.
Leveraging her experience working with pathogenic viruses in high containment settings, Dr. Coffey’s role in UC-ATTACK is to evaluate evolution of antiviral-resistance and to assess efficacy of candidate anti-viral drugs in small animal models.
Felice Lightstone, PhD
Group Leader of Biochemical and Biophysical Systems Group
Associate Program Lead of Medical Countermeasures
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Dr. Lightstone is the Director of the American Heart Association’s Center for Accelerated Drug Discovery. She holds undergraduate degrees in Electrical Engineering and Honors Biology and a Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research uses cutting-edge, multi-scale, in silico simulations to tackle problems in biology. A wide range of computational biology and machine learning methods that employ LLNL’s high-performance computing resources are used to accelerate the design and development of new therapies.
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She has ongoing collaborations with industry and academia to computationally optimize compounds and bring Investigational New Drug entities to clinical trials.
Sandia National Laboratories
Staff Scientist
Michael A. Rogawski, MD, PhD
Tess Brown
Distinguished Professor
Departments of Neurology and Pharmacology
University of California, Davis
Dr. Rogawski holds MD and PhD degrees in Pharmacology from the Yale University School of Medicine. His research focuses on drug discovery and development and on drug regulation.
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His role in this network is to coordinate non-clinical IND-enabling studies of novel antivirals developed by the ATTACK Consortium.
Robert Damoiseaux, PhD
Professor
University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Pharmacology, David Geffen School of Medicine, Department of Bioengineering, Samueli School of Engineering and California NanoSystems Institute
Dr. Damoiseaux received a PhD in bioorganic chemistry of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland for the directed evolution of antibodies towards alky-transferase activities, laying the foundation for approaches for what later became the SNAP-tag technology; at the Functional Genomics Institute of Novartis in La Jolla, he developed the first nucleic acid encoded small molecule substrate libraries in 2004 before joining UCLA to build the Molecular Screening Shared Resource where he now resides as professor directing the UCLA small molecule drug discovery efforts in the California NanoSystems Institute. Over 110 publications with a total of ~8500 citations, H-index of 47.
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His role in the ATTACK consortium is to provide expertise in target selection and validation, functional genomics, assay development and validation, screening library selection including PAINS filtering and structure activity analysis for drug optimization.
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Sandia National Laboratories
Staff Scientist
Julia Schaletzky, PhD
Executive Director
University of California Berkeley Drug Discovery Center
Henry Wheeler Center of Emerging and Neglected Diseases
Immunotherapy and Vaccine Research Initiative
Leading the Center for Emerging and Neglected Diseases at UC Berkeley, Dr. Schaletzky's mission is to Educate, Connect and Catalyze new research. She combines rigorous academic and industry training with a focus on innovation benefiting patients. With 11 years of hands-on industry experience after her PhD, she returned to academia to establish a drug discovery and translational science center, and work with some of the most innovative people she knows on the development of novel therapeutics. The drug discovery center became operational just in time for the pandemic – with a screening-ready library and automation at UC Berkeley, and a fully equipped BSL-3 facility because of UC Berkeley’s focus on tuberculosis research, they were able to quickly execute several screens to identify antivirals and compound synergistic with therapeutic frontrunner remdesivir.
At UC Berkeley and in the biotech-rich Bay Area, Dr. Schaletzky has found close-to-ideal conditions for developing innovative approaches to hit finding into leads and ultimately, drug candidates.
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ATTACK will give us the opportunity to collaborate, internationally and with Bay Area industry partners and with NIH, on the development of novel, innovative and modular approaches to antivirals.
Priya Shah, PhD
Assistant Professor
University of California, Davis
Dr. Shah received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from MIT and her Ph.D in Chemical Engineering at UC Berkeley. She pursued her postdoctoral training at UCSF. Dr. Shah started her lab at UC Davis in 2017, where she holds a joint appointment in Chemical Engineering and Microbiology & Molecular Genetics. She was named a Gardener Fellow in 2018 and Hellman Fellow in 2021. Her group studies virus-host interactions uses systems biology approaches.
Dr. Shah brings expertise in proteomics analysis of virus-host protein interactions, and dissecting their function using biochemical and molecular biology approaches to the UC-ATTACK project.
Michael A. Malfatti, PhD
Biomedical Scientist,
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Dr. Malfatti holds a PhD in Pharmacology/Toxicology from the University of California, Davis, and has over 20 years experience in small molecule ADME studies in in vitro and in vivo models. As a project leader in the Biological Accelerator Mass Spectrometry group at LLNL, he studies low dose pharmacokinetics and biodistribution of drugs and toxicants in animal models and humans.
His focus in ATTACK includes characterizing the low-dose pharmacokinetic, metabolism, and tissue distribution properties of toxicants and potential drug leads using accelerator mass spectrometry to understand their mechanisms of action. Other focus areas include developing novel therapeutics for opioid and organophosphate exposure and investigating how changes in the gut microbiome can alter drug metabolism by characterizing the pharmacokinetics and metabolism of drugs after manipulation of the gut microbiota.
Ruben Abagyan, PhD
Professor
University of California, San Diego, School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, San Diego Supercomputer Center
Dr. Abagyan received a PhD in molecular physics at MPTI and MSU; at EMBL in Heidelberg he developed internal coordinate mechanics and structural docking approach (ICM) for modeling and docking, an expert in computer-aided drug design, screening, properties. He founded Molsoft LLC, received his tenure at New York University and Courant Institute of Mathematics, continued at Novartis Functional Genomics Institute as a Director of Computational Chemistry, the Scripps Research Institute and UCSD in La Jolla as a professor. Over 330 publications and 37,700 citations, H-index of 93, several awards, including Princess Diana Award.
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His role in the ATTACK consortium is to provide expertise in the pocket optimization, docking, structure- and AI-based discovery, optimization, and PK/PD characterization of antiviral drug candidates.
Paul Krogstad, MD, MS
Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular and Medical Pharmacology
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Paul Krogstad, MD earned BS and MS degrees in cybernetics and bioengineering at UCLA before matriculating to Tulane University School of Medicine. After completing residency training in Pediatrics he received subspecialty fellowship training in Pediatric Infectious Diseases and followed this with postdoctoral studies in retrovirology studies at UCLA. His research has centered on the pathophysiology and treatment of HIV and enterovirus infections in infants and children. He is currently Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at UCLA. He CV includes 125 peer reviewed publications and book chapters; H-index 36.
His expertise for the ATTACK consortium includes molecular virology, clinical pharmacology, and leadership of clinical trials.