College of Pharmacy graduate students and postdocs recently attended and competed at the Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Tennessee, and Oklahoma (MALTO) research conference and meeting held May 18-20 at the University of Mississippi in Oxford.
Five graduate students from the College of Pharmacy competed for the Bob Magarian Best Podium Presentation Award, which is given to the presenter who gives the best oral presentation from the podium. Rui Wang, a graduate student working in Dr. Wei Li’s lab in the Pharmaceutical Sciences track, placed second in this competition and was only 1/10th of a point short of winning the award (the maximum possible total points were 35). Ms. Wang’s presentation was titled “SB-216, a novel tubulin inhibitor, shows potent anti-cancer activity in pancreatic cancer.” She previously received the Outstanding Student Award in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the UTHSC College of Graduate Health Sciences at their awards ceremony held April 29. This award recognizes one student in each program/track who has excelled academically and has made significant contributions to benefit others.
In addition, Dr. Vijay Kumar Boda received the Ronald F. Borne Postdoctoral Poster Presentation Award at the MALTO meeting. This award comes with a $150 cash prize. Dr. Boda’s poster was titled “Discovery of selective TRPC3 antagonists for the treatment of neurodegenerative disease.” He is currently a postdoc in the lab of Dr. Wei Li.
The MALTO research conference serves as a forum for graduate, undergraduate, and professional program (PharmD) students and postdoctoral fellows to present their research and engage in discussions in an atmosphere of fellowship. The MALTO meeting also serves as a platform for faculty from the Schools/Colleges of Pharmacy of the six Southern states that comprise MALTO to discuss and exchange ideas of drug discovery-related research and the medicinal chemistry and pharmacognosy disciplines.
“The impressively high placement of these students and postdocs from the College of Pharmacy speaks to the high quality of their research and competitiveness among their regional peers,” said Dr. Wei Li, PhD, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Director of the UTHSC College of Pharmacy Drug Discovery Center.
