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Elizabeth Childress, Ph.D.

Drug Discovery Scientist
Assistant Director of Medicinal Chemistry


Education

The College of William and Mary, 2015
B.S. Chemistry

Virginia Tech, 2017
Ph.D. Organic Chemistry

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}