Elizabeth Childress, Ph.D.

Drug Discovery Scientist I/Assistant Director of Medicinal Chemistry

	The College of William and Mary, 2015 B.S. Chemistry
	Virginia Tech, 2017 Ph.D. Organic Chemistry

Phone: (615) 322-7415
Fax: (615) 778-1414
Email: elizabeth.s.childress@vanderbilt.edu
Location: Cool Springs Innovation Park

Mailing Address:

Vanderbilt University/WCNDD
Cool Springs Innovation Park
393 Nichol Mill Lane, Room 1000
Franklin, TN 37067

Biosketch and Research Interests

Beth comes to the Lindsley Lab from Christiansburg, Virginia. She earned her B.S. in Chemistry from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia in 2012. Beth earned her Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Virginia Tech in 2017 under the instruction of Professor Webster Santos where her focus was developing small molecule mitochondrial uncouplers and inhibitors for sphingosine kinase II.

Beth joined the Lindsley lab as a postdoctoral research fellows in July 2017 and is currently working on developing novel negative allosteric modulators for the metabotropic glutamate receptor mGluR2, in addition to working on a collaboration beteween VCNDD and Ono Pharmaceuticals. Beth’s research interests include medicinal chemistry and synthetic organic chemistry.

Selected Publications

Childress, E.S.; Kharel, Y.; Brown, A.M.; Bevan, D.R.; Lynch, K.R.; Santos, W.L. ‘Transforming Sphingosine Kinase 1 Inhibitors into Dual and Sphingosine Kinase 2-Selective Inhibitors: Design, Synthesis, and In Vivo Activity’ Journal of Medicinal Chemistry (2017); 60(9): 3933-3957. {DOI: 10.1021/acs.jmedchem.7b00233; PMID: 2846646}

Congdon, M.D.; Childress, E.S.; Patwardhan, N.N.; Grumkowski, J.; Morris, E.A.; Kharel, Y.; Lynch, K.L.; Santos, W.L. ‘Structure-Activity Relationship Studies of the Lipophilic Tail Region of Sphingosine Kinase 2 Inhibitors’ Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters (2015); 25(21): 4956-4960. {DOI: 10.1016/j.bmcl.2015.03.041; PMID: 25862200}