Our Group
Gregory Thatcher, PhD
Professor, Pharmacology and Toxicology
R. Ken and Donna Coit Endowed Chair in Drug Discovery
Greg Thatcher, PhD, joined the University of Arizona in 2020 from the University of Illinois College of Pharmacy. In his career, he has graduated over 50 students with PhD’s and a dozen with MSc’s and mentored 40 undergraduate researchers, the majority of these undergrads while on faculty in the Chemistry Department at Queen's University in Canada from 1988 until 2002. These trainees have proceeded to positions in biotech, pharma, business, education, and academia in the USA, Canada, Europe, India, and China.
While at the University of Illinois in Chicago (UIC), Thatcher acted as founder/leader of the Translational Oncology Program in the University of Illinois Cancer Center and co-director of the NIA Predoctoral Training Program in Alzheimer’s Disease & Related Dementia. In 2013, he founded a campus-wide and disease-agnostic drug discovery center at UIC, focused on small molecule drug discovery, which continues to play an active role in academic drug discovery across Chicago. Dr. Thatcher created his first start-up biotech company in 1997, which successfully took an Alzheimer’s drugs into human clinical trials.
The Thatcher lab’s research has been continuously funded by the NIH since 2003, supported by NCI, NIA, NHLBI, NIAID, and NCCAM, resulting in over 170 publications and dozens of issued patents. Two new chemical entities were licensed and successfully completed Phase 1 clinical trials for metastatic breast cancer in 2019.
Graduate Students
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Rukayat Aromokeye
4th Year
Pharmacology Toxicology
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Jenna Courey
3rd year
Chemistry and Biochemistry
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Farinaz Soleymani
3rd year
Chemistry and Biochemistry
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Fahmida Alam
2nd Year
Chemistry and Biochemistry
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Candace Outten
2nd Year
Pharmacology Toxicology
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Erick Alves
2nd Year
Drug Discovery and Development
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Juhaer Anjum
1st Year
Chemistry and Biochemistry
Postdoctoral Research Associates
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Maha Ibrahim Sulaiman
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Savio Cardoza
Staff Scientists
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Martha Ackerman-Berrier
Research Specialist
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Nina Ma
Research Specialist
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Ganga Reddy Velma, Ph.D.
Researcher/Scientist III
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Soumya Musku
Research Specialist
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Anandhan Annadurai
Research Assistant Professor
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Cameron Holberg
Research Technician
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Senthilkumar Thulasingam
Research Technician III
Undergraduate Students
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Katrina Vollmer
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Abby Wolf
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Meghan Sheehan
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Morgan Jenkins
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Lisa Lazareva
Previous Group Members:
Staff Scientists
Dr. Chris Penton
Natalie Knowles
Dr. Pavel Rychetsky
Karen Blohm-Mangone
Postdocs
Dr. Zhengnan Shen
Dr. Jiqiang Fu
Grad Students
Dr. Megan Laham
Dr. Isabella Krider
Undergraduates
Caroline Coppinger
Sarah Turner