Deep dive into drug development

Cody Dickinson, MUSC pharmacy staff scientist who joined Mark Hamann's lab last year, is leading an expedition on a National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) research vessel this summer to recover additional materials related to the use of aleutianamine in lab and animal models for the control of pancreatic cancer. 

Dickinson will be joined by MUSC pharmacy's Menny Benjamin and the University of Miami's Lindsay Weingart (who is also an applicant to the MUSC Ph.D. program), and they will spend several weeks doing deep ocean surveys in Alaska for drug producing organisms.

Aleutianamine has been published by several labs as the most potent and selective inhibitor of pancreatic cancer published to date. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded Hamann a $2.1 million RO1 grant two years ago to further research into this promising class of alkaloids.