Students Honored for Research, Leadership

By Elizabeth Chapin on March 20, 2009 3:06 PM

USC School of Pharmacy Ph.D. candidates Erik Serrao, Tino Sanchez and Ben Xu have won fellowships to support their respective research projects in drug development and Pharm.D. candidate Paulin Heng received a student leadership award.

Doctoral student Sanchez received a two-year, $50,000 dissertation fellowship from the California HIV/AIDS Research Program. The program provides funding to support HIV/AIDS research in California.

Sanchez, who works in the lab of associate professor Nouri Neamati, is working toward the development of drugs for patients with HIV. The disease works by invading an immune cell, using three key enzymes - protease, reverse transcriptase, and integrase - for replication. Sanchez’s work targets the integrase enzyme as it is key in allowing viral DNA to invade host cells. Among HIV therapies, there is currently only one integrase inhibitor that is FDA-approved.

“HIV is the most unique and devastating virus known thus far with all sorts of tricks to evade eradication,” Sanchez said. “My work will give AIDS patients more hope at stemming the virus and evading the emergence of drug-resistant strains.”

To increase the likelihood of identifying effective compounds against the virus, Sanchez combines computer-based modeling with lab experimentation. This saves times and provides the best opportunity for his work to efficiently identify promising compounds.

Serrao, another grant winner doing HIV/AIDS research in the lab of Neamati, was awarded a $19,000 Oakley Fellowship, part of the USC Graduate School Endowed Fellowship Competition. The Oakley Fellowship is available to Ph.D. candidates in any field across the university.

Like Sanchez, Serrao’s research also targets the integrase enzyme. His work focuses on the development of new compounds that can inhibit HIV integrase from incorporating the virus into chromosomes.

Xu was awarded a Sjögren’s Syndrome Foundation student fellowship, which will help support his research project on an autoimmune disease characterized by tear gland inflammation and dry eye. According to the foundation, the disease affects as many as four million Americans.

Working toward the development of drugs for those suffering from the disease, Xu will use the $3,000 summer fellowship to study how antibodies are transported from the blood through the tear gland and into tears.

Xu is a Ph.D. student in the lab of Sarah Hamm-Alvarez, the Gavin S. Herbert Professor in Pharmaceutical Sciences and chair of the Department of Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Science. Her lab is known for its work on Sjögren’s syndrome.

Third-year Pharm.D. candidate Paulin Heng received the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists Student Leadership Award recognizing leadership in students interested in health-system pharmacy practice. Heng received a $2,500 cash award and a drug information library valued at more than $1,000.

In addition to leading various student pharmaceutical organizations, Heng also contributes to educational and screening programs that focus on underserved communities in Los Angeles.

Heng serves as the lead intern pharmacist at Olympia Medical Center in Los Angeles.

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