51ĀŅĀ×

Editorā€™s Note: The College of Arts & Sciences Notable Alumni Awards honor alumni for broad career accomplishments, commitment to community service, and valuable contributions to 51ĀŅĀ× and the College of Arts & Sciences.

Dennis Wright ā€™96 Ph.D. Chemistry

Dr. Dennis L. Wright has made significant contributions to science and medicine by exploring both new pharmaceutical drugs as well as the potential of natural products. And heā€™s not afraid to spend time looking for solutions to problems where others have given up.

He is the , where he manages the companyā€™s research portfolio, and , where his research interests include ā€œdevelopment of small-molecule therapeutics based on complex natural products and therapeutic development for infectious disease, cancer and neurodegenerative disorders.ā€

Some of his work involves new antibacterial and antifungal agents, ā€œan unrelenting problem owing to the onset of resistance,ā€ he says, and one where traditional pharmaceutical companies donā€™t always invest.

Wright also is taking a new approach to Tubercolusis, the leading deadly infectious disease in the world, ā€œdeveloping drugs that target the bacteria in different ways from previous classes of drugs,ā€ UConn writes in ā€œ.ā€

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ā€œDr. Wrightā€™s research program lies at the interface of organic structure and biological function, and is grounded in a strong synthetic organic core that also includes many important aspects of modern medicinal chemistry, including structure-based drug design, drug disposition/metabolism, and high-throughput screening. He leads a successful research group at the UConn School of Pharmacy, with 18 years continuous research support, including over $10 million in funding, six awarded patents and over 100 peer-reviewed publications, and has trained over 20 doctoral students and several post-doctoral fellows,ā€ says his Quercus profile. ā€œHis research has benefited greatly from strong collaborations, allowing him to expand drug design work into new areas.ā€

ā€œThe development of anti-microbial agents is arguably one of the most important areas of academic drug discovery as the need for new agents is unrelenting owing to the onset of resistance. The problem is magnified as many traditional pharmaceutical companies have largely divested from the area due to poor underlying economic assumptions,ā€ he says on his Quercus profile.

He also has had ā€œa long-standing interest in the potential of natural products as new therapeutic agents, an interest that ranges from the development of new methodology to total synthesis to analog design and evaluation. My group has always been interested in utilizing the unique reactivity of the aromatic heterocycle furan in the construction of architecturally complex terpenoids.ā€

Wright is a member of the .

Wright earned a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the College of Arts & Sciences at 51ĀŅĀ×.

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