Athens, Ga. – The annual Chu Lecture at the University of Georgia College of Pharmacy will feature “Nucleoside Analogs as RNA-Dependent RNA Polymerase Inhibitors of Single Stranded RNA Viruses.” Presented by Dennis Liotta, director of the Emory Institute of Drug Development, it will be held March 19 at 11 a.m. in the Pharmacy South auditorium.
Attendees are invited to a reception at 10:30 a.m.
The Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Chemistry at Emory University, Liotta is an academic leader in the field of medicinal chemistry. In the mid-1980s, he initiated a research program in HIV therapeutics. The program led to the breakthrough drug Emtriva, which Liotta discovered with colleagues Raymond Schinazi and Woo-Baeg Choi. The FDA approved Emtriva for the treatment of HIV infection in 2003.
Liotta has had more than 200 research publications and patents during his tenure at Emory. Over the last 20 years, he has developed a great deal of experience in the discovery and development of pharmaceuticals and has served as a consultant to several major pharmaceutical firms, including Merck, Glaxo, Burroughs Wellcome, Boehringer Ingelheim and Johnson & Johnson.
Liotta received his doctorate in organic chemistry in 1974 from the City University of New York, completed his post-doctoral training at Ohio State University and began his career as an assistant professor at Emory in 1976. During his tenure at Emory, he has served as the chemistry department chair and the vice president for research.
The Chu Lectureship, sponsored by the department of pharmaceutical and biomedical sciences at UGA, was established to bring internationally recognized leaders in drug discovery to the university and to honor the accomplishments and contributions of David C.K. Chu, a distinguished research professor emeritus in the College of Pharmacy.
For more information on the UGA department of pharmaceutical and biomedical sciences, see http://pbs.rx.uga.edu/.
