Meet the members of our lab
The members of our lab come from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, nationalities, sexual orientations, genders, cultures, religious backgrounds, socioeconomic backgrounds, and others. We work hard to create an environment where members of our lab feel included and valued. If you have questions about what it is like to work in our lab, please contact us.
Lab Members and Alumni Heading link
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Prof. Terry Moore
Dr. Moore’s collaborative research program focuses on making and studying new drug-like molecules that target an important, yet understudied, group of drug targets: transcription factors. Controlling and modulating gene expression with small molecules and peptides has the potential to pave the way for new therapeutics to treat important biomedical problems, like chronic wound healing and many types of cancer. As a result of this work, he was named the 2017 UIC Rising Star Researcher of the Year in the Basic Life Sciences. This success as an independent investigator is consonant with his training with two of the world’s most well-respected academic medicinal chemists: John Katzenellenbogen and Dennis Liotta. As a Ph.D. student with John Katzenellenbogen at UIUC, Dr. Moore gained experience with high-throughput screens and developing structure-activity relationships arising from small molecules identified from those screens. As a postdoctoral fellow with Dennis Liotta at Emory University, he developed an expertise in small molecule hit-to-lead optimization, with a particular emphasis on simultaneously enhancing potency, physicochemical and pharmaceutical properties of preclinical agents. Since arriving at UIC, he has established a productive research team to study several transcription factors, including estrogen receptor and NRF2. (Photo by UIC – Jenny Fontaine)
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Dr. Shaimaa Aboukhatwa
Shaimaa is a visiting postdoctoral scholar in the Moore lab. She received her BSc in pharmaceutical sciences, MSc, and PhD of pharmaceutical chemistry from Tanta University, Egypt. Her PhD studies were jointly supervised by Prof. Pavel Petukhov at the UIC medicinal chemistry department, under an Egyptian Government scholarship (2015-2019). During her PhD, she worked on design and synthesis of photo-reactive HDAC isoform-selective probes, which were used in photoaffinity labeling studies of live cells and tissues. After her PhD studies, she worked as an assistant professor at Pharmaceutical Chemistry Department, Tanta University, Egypt. Shaimaa joined the Moore lab in 2022 and contributes to the NRF2-KEAP1 interaction inhibitors. Additionally, she is working on developing chemical probes to study host-microbiome symbiotic behaviors.Dr. A'Lester Allen
A’Lester is an IRACDA postdoc affiliated with our lab. He graduated with a PhD in chemistry in 2022 from the University of California Santa Cruz, where he studied plasmonic nanoparticles to detect protein and lipid biomarkers using surface-enhanced Raman scattering. He holds an MS in materials engineering from San Jose State University, and a BS in Chemistry from Stanford University. He joined us in 2022 and contributes to the apidaecin project.
Dr. Murugesh Venkatesth
Dr. Venkatesh Murugesh is a postdoctoral researcher in the Moore lab. He obtained his Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry from AcSIR, CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Hyderabad under the supervision of Dr. Surisetti Suresh, in 2019. During his Ph.D., he worked on the development of transition metal-catalyzed sequential/tandem organic transformations. He joined the laboratory of Prof. Dr. Surya Prakash Singh CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Hyderabad, India in 2019 as research associate, where he developed photo redox catalytic method developments, and then he moved to Prof. Cheol-Min Park’s lab, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Ulsan, South Korea for his postdoctoral studies on medicinal chemistry until August 2022. He joined the Moore lab in October 2022 and contributes to the development of small molecule inhibitors of Ebolavirus.
Dr. Keith Long
Keith is a postdoctoral scholar in the Moore Lab. He received his PharmD (2017) as well as his PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences (2022) from the University of Pittsburgh. His Ph.D. studies in the medicinal chemistry track were under the supervision of Dr. Donna Huryn. Broadly, he focused on small molecule therapies for acute kidney injury including the development of zinc binding group bioisosteres for a non-hydroxamate HDAC inhibitor. He joined the Moore Lab in 2023 and is working on the apidaecin antimicrobial project.
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Changfeng Cheng
Changfeng is a graduate student in Medicinal Chemistry. He received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His work involves creating chemical probes to explore the association and interactions of SIN3 transcription regulatory proteins with HDAC complexes and their role in the proliferation of triple-negative breast cancer.
Honors/Awards2020, Provost Graduate Research Award
Publications
Skowron, K. J.; Booker, K. M.; Cheng, C.; Creed, S.; David, B. P.; Lazzara, P. R.; Lian, A.; Siddiqui, Z.; Speltz, T. E.; Moore, T. W. Steroid Receptor/Coactivator Binding Inhibitors: An Update. Molecular and Cellular Endocrinology, 2019, 493, 110471. doi: 10.1016/j.mce.2019.110471.Ren, P.; Tiede, C.; Fanning, S. W.; Adams, T.; Speirs, V.; Nelson, E. R.; Cheng, C.; Moore, T. W.; Greene, G. L.; Tomlinson, D.; Selvin, P. R. Labeling of a Mutant Estrogen Receptor with an Affimer in a Breast Cancer Cell Line. Biophysical Journal 2022. doi: 10.1016/j.bpj.2022.06.028.Destiny Durante
Destiny is a graduate of The Pennsylvania State University with a background in biochemistry. She works on synthesizing potential therapies for Ebola treatment. Her goal after obtaining a PhD is to become an entrepreneur and to own a successful skincare product line.
Honors/Awards
2020, Access to Excellence FellowshipTatum Johnson
Tatum is an alumna of the University of Texas at Austin. She joined the lab in Spring 2021. Currently, she is working to improve the selectivity of estrogen receptor antagonists for the treatment of tamoxifen-resistant breast cancer.
Honors/Awards
2020, UIC Bridge to the Doctorate Fellow
Tyler Kalanquin
Tyler is a graduate student in Pharmaceutical Sciences with a concentration in Chemistry in Drug Discovery. He received his B.S. in Biomolecular Science from the University of Michigan in 2019. His research focuses on developing new anti-influenza therapeutics by mediating viral entry.
Mario Alvarez
Mario is a graduate student in Pharmaceutical Sciences with a concentration in Chemistry in Drug Discovery. He received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of California Santa Cruz in 2021. His research focuses on developing new antivirals against Nipah and Ebola.
John Sloan
John is a graduate student in Pharmaceutical Sciences with a concentration in Chemistry in Drug Discovery. He received his B.S. in Chemistry from Purdue University in 2021. His research focuses on developing new anti-influenza therapeutics by mediating viral entry.
Trevor Dean
Trevor is a Pharmaceutical Sciences graduate student in the Chemistry and Drug Discovery concentration. He completed his H.BSc in biochemistry at McGill University in 2019. He later completed his MSc at the University of Toronto in 2022 where he used molecular and structural biology techniques to study viral proteins. In the Moore lab, Trevor contributes to the Apidaecin project.
PublicationsDean TT, Serrão VHB, Lee JE. Structure of the Core Postfusion Porcine Endogenous Retrovirus Fusion Protein. mBio. 2022 Feb 22;13(1):e0292021. doi: 10.1128/mbio.02920-21. Epub 2022 Jan 25. PMID: 35073741; PMCID: PMC8787476.Juliet Jelú
Juliet is a Pharmaceutical Sciences graduate student in the Chemistry in Drug Discovery concentration. She received her B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras in 2022. Her research focuses on the development of stapled peptides that modulate the estrogen receptor to address breast cancer.Honors/Awards2022, Access to Excellence Fellowship -
Lab Alumni
Dr. Saad Alqarni, graduate research assistant (2020-2022; currently assistant professor at University of Ha’il, Saudi Arabia; LinkedIn)
Kirthi Bellamkonda, undergraduate research assistant (2014-2015; currently MD student at Yale University; formerly MSc student at Oxford University, UK; LinkedIn)
Karolina Blaszcuk, undergraduate lab assistant (2013-2014; currently Associate QA Engineer at Medline Industries; LinkedIn)
Kenneth Booker, undergraduate research assistant (2017-2019; currently MS student in Science Education at UIC; LinkedIn)
Alexandra Castroverde, SURF fellow (2020; currently undergraduate student at Cornell University; LinkedIn)
Dr. Ewelina Choma, Riback Fellow (2016; currently clinical pharmacist at VA Greater Los Angeles; LinkedIn)
Dr. Brian David, graduate research assistant (2015-2020; currently Scientist I at Unnatural Products; LinkedIn)
Rohit De, ResearcHStart fellow (2016-2017; currently National Merit Scholar and undergraduate student at University of Texas at Dallas)
Dr. Lara Fakhouri, visiting assistant professor and sabbatical fellow (2019; currently assistant professor at Jordan University of Science and Technology; LinkedIn)
Jasmine Harris, ResearcHStart fellow (2017; currently undergraduate student at UIC)
Dr. Atul Jain, postdoc (2013-2016; currently Research Scientist at Novo Nordisk; LinkedIn)
Kyle Kremiller, rotation student (2019; currently MD/PhD student at UIC; LinkedIn)
Ipsita Krishnamurthy, Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow (2019; currently graduate student at Stanford University; LinkedIn)
Dr. Phillip Lazzara, postdoc (2017-2020; currently Sr. Scientist I at Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals; LinkedIn)
Victoria Lewandowski, undergraduate research assistant (2019-2020; currently Tissue Recovery Technician at Gift of Hope Organ and Tissue Donor Network; LinkedIn)
Amy Lian; undergraduate research assistant (2019-2020)
Tahnee Muller, undergraduate research assistant (2016; currently undergraduate student at University of Chicago; LinkedIn)
Patrick Nwanah, undergraduate research assistant (2016; currently nursing student at UIC; LinkedIn)
Jennifer Obike, MARC/USTAR fellow (2021; currently graduate student at Vanderbilt University; LinkedIn)
Ishmael Ochir, undergraduate research assistant (2015; currently PharmD student at Roosevelt University; LinkedIn)
Dr. Benjamin Richardson, graduate research assistant (2014-2018; currently postdoc at The Scripps Research Institute Florida; LinkedIn)
Zohra Sattar, ASPET Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow (2017; currently PhD student at Northwestern University; LinkedIn)
Andriana Scencirro, undergraduate lab assistant (2013; currently OB/GYN resident at Howard University; formerly MD student at Ross University School of Medicine; LinkedIn)
Darshil Shah, research assistant (2013; currently PhD student at Long Island University; LinkedIn)
Dr. Zamia Siddiqui, graduate research assistant in joint PharmD/MS program (2015-2023; LinkedIn)
Dr. Kornelia Skowron, graduate research assistant (2018-2022; currently postdoctoral fellow at Washington University St. Louis; LinkedIn)
Dr. Thomas Speltz, graduate research assistant (2014-2018; currently Research Scientist II at Evozyyne, LLC; formerly postdoc at University of Chicago; LinkedIn)
Dr. José Villegas, Bridge to Faculty Scholar (2020-2022; currently Assistant Professor at University of Illinois Chicago; LinkedIn)