Our Group

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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

  • Megan Laham

    5th year

    Chemistry and Biochemistry

  • Isabella Krider

    5th year

    Chemistry and Biochemistry

  • Rukayat Aromokeye

    4th Year

    Pharmacology Toxicology

  • Jenna Courey

    3rd year

    Chemistry and Biochemistry

  • Farinaz Soleymani

    3rd year

    Chemistry and Biochemistry

  • Fahmida Alam

    2nd Year

    Chemistry and Biochemistry

  • Candace Outten

    2nd Year

    Pharmacology Toxicoloy

  • Erick Alves

    2nd Year

    Drug Discovery and Development

Postdoctoral Research Associates

  • Maha Ibrahim Sulaiman

  • Savio Cardoza

Staff Scientists

  • Martha Ackerman-Berrier

    Research Specialist

  • Nina Ma

    Research Specialist

  • Ganga Reddy Velma, Ph.D.

    Researcher/Scientist III

  • Soumya Musku

    Research Specialist

  • Anandhan Annadurai

    Research Assistant Professor

  • Cameron Holberg

    Research Technician

Undergraduate Students

  • Katrina Vollmer

  • Abby Wolf

  • Sarah Turner

  • Meghan Sheehan

Previous Group Members:

Dr. Chris Penton

Natalie Knowles

Dr. Pavel Rychetsky

Dr. Zhengnan Shen

Dr. Jiqiang Fu

Karen Blohm-Mangone