By Lisa Howard
UC Davis Health
See Video on YouTube (includes segment with Bruce Hammock, UC Davis distinguished professor)
Researchers at UC Davis are developing a new type of pain medication from an unusual source — tarantula venom.
The project is part of the NIH Helping to End Addiction Long-Term (HEAL) Initiative, aimed at ending opioid addiction and creating non-addictive therapies to treat pain.
Vladimir Yarov-Yarovoy, a professor of physiology and membrane biology, and Heike Wulff, a professor of pharmacology, are leading the 20-person team using computational biology to turn a poisonous peptide into one that can relieve pain. Peptides are smaller versions of proteins.
“Spiders and scorpions have millions of years of evolution optimizing peptide, protein and small-molecule poisons in their venom, which we can take advantage of,” said Bruce Hammock, a distinguished professor of entomology, who is working on the new pain reliever. “The same venoms that can cause pain and neurological dysfunction can also help nerves work better and reduce pain.”
Approximately 20 percent of adults in the U.S., around 50 million, are affected by chronic pain. About 11 million are affected by high-impact chronic pain, defined as pain that lasts three months or longer and restricts a significant activity, like being unable to work outside the home, go to school or do household chores.
A few non-opioid medications are available to help those with chronic pain, and complementary or integrative health approaches can help. In general, though, people with chronic pain have limited options for pain relief.
“For strong pain, drugs like ibuprofen or aspirin are just not strong enough. Opioids are strong enough, but they have the problem of tolerance development and addiction,” said Wulff.
Opioid addiction and misuse in the United States surged in recent years, leading to a significant health crisis. In 2019, nearly 50,000 people in the United States died from opioid-involved overdoses.
“What we need are new medications, new therapies with improved risk profiles,” said David Copenhaver, a member of the team and director of Cancer Pain Management and Supportive Care at UC Davis Health. “There's been a push to develop other, better, safer, less addictive — or zero addictive — medication and therapeutics for pain management,” said Copenhaver, who is also the associate director for the Center for Advancing Pain Relief at UC Davis.
“Channels” key to new pain reliever
To create a non-addictive but strong pain medication, the researchers are focused on pain signals traveling on sensory neurons. To stop these signals, they have targeted a particular type of protein “channel” found on the cell membranes of neurons and muscles.
These channels, called voltage-gated sodium channels, play a crucial role in generating signals to nerves and muscles.
Nine different types of these channels have been identified in humans. The sodium symbol is Na, so the voltage-gated channels are referred to as Nav1.1 through Nav1.9.
The Nav1.7 channel is the one that interests pain scientists the most because it is a key source of pain transmission.
That's where the tarantula venom comes in. A peptide — a type of protein — found in the venom of the Peruvian green velvet tarantula blocks Nav1.7, preventing it from transmitting signals, including those for pain.
“The promise of a Nav1.7 inhibitor is that we would have something that is as effective as an opioid, but not addictive,” said Wulff, who specializes in preclinical therapeutics development targeting ion channels.
The challenge with the protein in the tarantula venom is that it doesn't just block Nav1.7 channels in the sensory nerves. In its natural form, the peptide blocks all Nav1.7 channels, including those in the muscles and the brain, meaning that it could cause terrible side effects.
Engineering a non-toxic protein
To solve this problem, the researchers are using an approach known as “toxineering.” They are trying to engineer — modify — the toxin in the venom to block pain signals but not create unwanted side effects.
To do this, they are using a computer program developed by the University of Washington called Rosetta. The complex modeling software lets the team create many different iterations of the tarantula peptide, which they can then synthesize and test in the lab.
“Using the Rosetta software, we can take a natural peptide and then redesign it and make it into a therapeutic,” said Yarov-Yarovoy, an expert in computational structural modeling of peptide toxins. “Our lead peptides already show efficacy at the level of morphine, but without the side effects of opioids.”
Their preliminary results are extremely promising, but a lot of work remains to be done. The potential therapeutic candidates will need to be tested in animals, and if found safe, carefully tested in humans. The researchers estimate any new medication is at least five years away.
“What Vladimir has put together is really fantastic because no one scientist could have any hope of tackling a project that is this hard,” Hammock said about the 20-person team. “But having a collection of people makes it fun and exciting, and I think it gives us a real chance at relieving pain.”
Additional team members include Karen Wagner, Jon T. Sack, Theanne Griffith, Scott Fishmann, Hai Nguyen, Daniel J. Tancredi, Nieng Yan, William Schmidt, Andre Ghetti, Neil Castle, Michael Pennington, Phuong Tran Nguyen, Brandon Harris, Diego Lopez Mateos, Robert Stewart and Parashar Thapa.
The tarantula venom research at UC Davis is funded by a $1.5 million grant from NIH initiative Helping to End Addiction Long-Term (HEAL). FOA Number: RFA-NS-19-010
Contact:
Lisa Howard, Health News Office
Public Affairs
UC Davis Health
4900 Broadway, Suite 1200
Sacramento, CA 95820
Phone: 916-752-6394
E-mail: lehoward@ucdavis.edu
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
This is part of the National Institutes of Health's Initiative to End Addiction Long-Term, also known as the HEAL Initiative, a self-described "aggressive, trans-agency effort to speed scientific solutions to stem the national opioid public health crisis."
Hammock, chief executive of EicOsis, and his team aim to provide a new analgesic solution for neuropathic pain management without the side effects of standard pain therapies.
The novel compound discovered by Hammock has been found effective for the treatment of pain in preclinical animal studies.
Abuse of prescription opioids has contributed in the deaths of more than 400,000 Americans in the last decade, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
This federal grant will help support Phase I and II clinical trials over the next five years with a goal of providing a new effective once-daily, oral, and non-addictive pain medication, said Hammock, who holds a joint appointment with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center.
The drug candidate, known as EC5026, works to inhibit soluble epoxide hydrolase (sEH), a key enzyme in the metabolism of fatty acids. Inhibition of sEH treats pain by stabilizing natural analgesic and anti-inflammatory mediators.
"The pathway we are targeting acts in balance to the other inflammatory pathways that are already a target of the pharmaceutical industry, such as NSAIDs and aspirin," said Alan Buckpitt, principal investigator of the grant and EicOsis vice president of pharmacology. "In fact, sEH inhibitors developed by EicOsis have already shown efficacy against moderate-to-severe pain in horses and dogs, and acts to increase the activity of NSAIDs while reducing their side effects. This grant will help us establish effects on reducing opioid use and addiction liabilities."
NIH launched the HEAL Initiative in April 2018 to improve prevention and treatment strategies for opioid misuse and addiction and enhance pain management. The initiative aims to improve treatments for chronic pain, curb the rates of opioid use disorder and overdose and achieve long-term recovery from opioid addiction.
The two-part grant awarded to EicOsis is a cooperative agreement between EicOsis and NIDA. The first two years ($6 million) establish specific milestones, and the remaining three years ($9 million) are awarded based on the successful completion of these milestones.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The award is part of the Revolutionizing Innovative, Visionary Environmental Health Research (RIVER) Program of the National Institutes of Environmental Health (NIEHS). This award is based on a track record of innovation and a ‘visionary' proposal to address serious problems in environmental health.
Hammock, who holds a joint appointment with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Society, is known for his expertise in chemistry, toxicology, biochemistry and entomology. He meshes all four sciences in his 50-year research on how environmental chemicals impact human health.
“I am thrilled to receive the RIVER award,” said Hammock, who joined the UC Davis faculty in 1980 and now devotes much of his research toward environmental health. “The National Institutes of Health has many institutes and several of them have funded my laboratory over the years. But it is the NIEHS that most closely matches my interests. They have supported my work since I was a graduate student, so I am particularly thrilled they have shown such high confidence in the science and work our laboratory does. This award certainly recognizes the current and past members of the laboratory who have been so productive and innovative.”
The program provides $6 million in funding over an eight-year period “to give scientists greater intellectual and administrative freedom as well as sustained support to achieve greater scientific impact,” according to NIEHS officials. RIVER provides a select few scientists with great latitude in addressing the most pressing scientific problems.
“Professor Hammock is especially deserving of this recognition for his important research over many years,” said Helene Dillard, dean of the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. “Environmental health is central to the mission of our college, and we anticipate that this award will empower him to continue making advances in areas with the potential to impact human well-being.”
Ken Burtis, faculty advisor to the Chancellor and Provost and past Dean of Biological Sciences at UC Davis, said it would be difficult to find “a more deserving scientist to invest in than Bruce Hammock.”
“We both worked in the same building, and Bruce was one of the most hard-working, creative and enthusiastic colleagues I knew,” Burtis said. “The grant process often limits innovation. The intellectual freedom NIEHS is providing Hammock makes our university shine and is a smart investment on the part of the agency. Their investment in him in the past paid off and RIVER will pay off even more in the future.”
When asked how the award would change his life, Hammock, a kayak enthusiast and instructor, responded: “I will give up kayaking the harder rivers, I certainly do not want to drown and have to give any of the funding back. Having been given this great freedom, it will be hard to live up to the expectations.”
Hammock, who has directed the NIEHS-UC Davis Superfund Research Program for the past 35 years, said many of his UC Davis collaborators are affiliated with the Superfund Program, including:
- Professor Aldrin Gomes who holds a joint appointment with the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior, College of Biological Sciences, and the Department of Physiology and Membrane Biology, School of Medicine;
- Fawaz Haj, who holds a joint appointment with the Department of Nutrition, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, and the Department of Internal Medicine, School of Medicine
- Research scientist Christophe Morisseau of the Hammock lab, Department of Entomology and Nematology and the Comprehensive Cancer Center, and
- Cardiologist Nipavan Chiamvimonvat of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, UC Davis Health System
“Bruce had been wonderful supporting students through running a training grant and particularly bringing diverse scientists together with the NIEHS Superfund Program,” said Chiamvimonvat. “It has been such a privilege to be part of this exciting program to understand the mechanisms of environmental contaminants on human health. His pioneering work on novel targets to combat inflammation has far-reaching applications, not only in pain, but also in other diseases including cancer and cardiovascular diseases, the two most common causes of morbidity and mortality.”
Gomes explained that rather than trying to find biological markers for individual environmental chemicals, this Superfund group is working together to find universal markers of stress and disease and understand how to prevent these diseases. ‘By stabilizing mitochondria, the endoplasmic reticulium and other cell organelles to stress,” Gomes said, “we are reducing toxicity, as well as understanding the very basis of tissue damage by commonly used drugs and pesticides and how to reverse it.”
Michael Lairmore, dean of the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, said he was pleased to hear that Hammock has won the NIEHS River Award. “Bruce is very deserving of this award,” Lairmore said. “He has pioneered trans-disciplinary research across campus and has engaged faculty in multiple colleges and schools to transform the way we treat diseases in multiple species. His creative approaches blend his natural curiosity with practical ways to translate his research findings into real world solutions to disease processes.”
“By providing research freedom through the RIVER award to Bruce Hammock, NIH made a remarkable decision,” said Scott Fishman, director of the Center for Advancing Pain Relief, Fullerton Endowed Chair in Pain Medicine, and executive vice chair of the Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine for the UC Davis School of Medicine.
“For example, Bruce sought me out shortly after I arrived at UC Davis with interest in reducing pain and our excessive use of opioids,” Fishman said. “Over time, he went on to develop an experimental pharmaceutical that is a promising unique non-opioid drug for treating chronic pain that will enter human trials this fall. With Hammock as a recipient, the NIH RIVER Program has declared its commitment to recognizing basic scientists who are developing profound solutions that address the opioid crisis.”
Harvard Medical School researcher and former physician, Dipak Panigraphy, said that “The pioneering studies from the Hammock laboratory not only have elucidated how certain environmental contaminants increase cancer risk, but our collaborative work shows promise for preventing metastasis and recurrence of cancer following surgical tumor resection and chemotherapy. These potentially paradigm shifting studies show that preoperative or peri-chemotherapeutic management of inflammation may stave off cancer recurrences.”
Said Hammock: “We would not have this without the scientific and intellectual input of Cindy McReynolds, program manager of the Superfund Program. Of course RIVER is a complement to the existing and past scientists who have worked on this project.”
The RIVER program is “the centerpiece of an emerging effort to support people, not projects, by providing support for much of an independent research program for outstanding investigators and giving them intellectual and administrative freedom, as well as sustained support, to pursue their research in novel directions in order to achieve greater impacts,” according to the NIEHS-RIVER website. “The RIVER program rewards outstanding environmental health sciences researchers who demonstrate a broad vision and potential for continuing their impactful research with increased scientific flexibility, stability in funding, and administrative efficiency.”
Nationally recognized for his achievements, Hammock is a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, which honors academic invention and encourages translations of inventions to benefit society. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the Entomological Society of America, and the recipient of scores of awards, including the first McGiff Memorial Awardee in Lipid Biochemistry; and the Bernard B. Brodie Award in Drug Metabolism, sponsored by the America Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.
“Bruce Hammock and his research team are the perfect example of how UC Davis translates university research into societal impact,” said Dushyant Pathak, associate vice chancellor for Innovation and Technology Commercialization in the UC Davis Office of Research.
“As a result of their fundamental work in unraveling both insect and human regulatory biology, the Hammock laboratory elucidated a biochemical pathway that regulates inflammation, pain and senescence,” Pathak said. “Enabled by this knowledge, a novel drug candidate to treat chronic pain is expected to enter human phase 1a trials this fall--also supported by NIH. The drug is licensed by the university to EicOsis, a company that is directing its development and is a UC Davis spin-off.”
A native of Little Rock, Ark., Hammock received his bachelor's degree in entomology (with minors in zoology and chemistry) magna cum laude from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, in 1969. He received his doctorate in entomology-toxicology from UC Berkeley in 1973 with John Casida at UC Berkeley. Hammock served as a public health medical officer with the U.S. Army Academy of Health Science, San Antonio, and as a postdoctoral fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation, Department of Biology, Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill.
Hammock traces the history of his enzyme research to his studies in the Casida laboratory. He was researching insect developmental biology and green insecticides when he and colleague Sarjeet Gill, now a distinguished professor at UC Riverside, discovered the target enzyme in mammals that regulates epoxy fatty acids.
“My research led to the discovery that many regulatory molecules are controlled as much by degradation and biosynthesis,” Hammock said. “The epoxy fatty acids control blood pressure, fibrosis, immunity, tissue growth, depression, pain and inflammation to name a few processes.”
“Basically, I began by trying to figure out how a key enzyme, epoxide hydrolase, degrades a caterpillar's juvenile hormone, leading to metamorphosis from the larval stage to the adult insect,” Hammock said. He asked himself these questions: “Does the enzyme occur in plants? Does it occur in mammals?" It does, and particularly as the soluble epoxide hydrolase in mammals.
"It is always important to realize that the most significant translational science we do in the university is fundamental science,” said Hammock, marveling that “this work to treat pain in companion animals, horses and humans all began by asking how caterpillars turn into butterflies.”
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The drug candidate, known as EC5026, targets a novel pathway to block the underlying cause of certain types of pain. Described by EicOsis as a “novel, non-opioid and oral therapy for neuropathic and inflammatory pain,” it is an inhibitor to the soluble epoxide hydrolase (sEH) enzyme, a key regulatory enzyme involved in the metabolism of fatty acids. UC Davis recently licensed certain patents supporting the underlying technology exclusively to EicOsis.
Clinical trials are expected to begin this summer. “The clinical trials would be the world's first clinical evaluation of sEH for pain,” said William Schmidt, EicOsis vice president of clinical development, who has focused his entire professional career on developing novel pain medicines. “I am thrilled that we have a drug candidate lacking the side effects of both opioids and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs that can potentially produce lead to an entirely new way to treat chronic pain.”
“Chronic pain is an enormous emotional and economic burden for more than 100 million people in the United States alone,” said Hammock, a UC Davis a distinguished professor who holds a joint appointment with the Department of Entomology and Nematology and the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center. He co-founded EicOsis in December 2011 to alleviate pain in humans and companion animals. “The extreme and poorly treated pain that I observed as a medical officer working in a burn clinic in the Army, is a major driver for me to translate my research to help patients with severe pain.”
National statistics show that as many as eight out of every 10 American adults suffer from chronic pain; three out of four patients consider their therapies for pain ineffective; and as many as a third of the opioid-prescribed patients misuse them.
Every day, more than 130 people in the United States die from opioid overdose, according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that the total economic burden of prescription opioid misuse alone in the United States is $78.5 billion a year. That includes the costs of health care, lost productivity, addiction treatment, and criminal justice involvement.
“This completes the fundraising for Phase 1 of the clinical development program of this novel pain therapeutic,” said Hammock. “We are particularly pleased that the support came from Open Philanthropy with its history of both financially successful and socially important investments.”
Dushyant Pathak, UC Davis associate vice chancellor for Research and executive director of Venture Catalyst, lauded the achievement. “We are very pleased to see the achievement of this important business milestone by EicOsis,” Pathak said. “It's especially heartening to see the entrepreneurial persistence of Bruce Hammock being recognized by Open Philanthropy.”
Open Philanthropy identifies outstanding investment opportunities and makes grants based on importance, need, and tractability, according to the organization's scientific advisors Chris Somerville and Heather Youngs. They said Open Philanthropy selected the Davis project because the EicOsis drug “may reduce suffering from chronic pain conditions which are severe in both developed and developing nations.”
On its website, http://www.eicosis.com, EicOsis depicts itself as “a privately held company developing a first-in-class therapy of a once daily, oral treatment for neuropathic and inflammatory pain in humans and companion animals.”
“Our orally active compounds stabilize natural regulatory mediators in the body that reduce endoplasmic reticulum stress, which, in turn, appears to cause a variety of chronic diseases,” said EicOsis neurobiologist Karen Wagner. “The EicOsis compounds represent a new mechanism of action that both resolves inflammation and reduces pain.”
EicOsis (pronounced eye-cosis), derives its name from eicosanoid, “the major backbone of chemical mediators in the arachidonate cascade,” said Cindy McReynolds, an EicOsis project manager and a doctoral student in pharmacology and toxicology at UC Davis. “It symbolizes the epoxide group in chemistry, which is key to the anti-inflammatory chemical mediators and where the biochemical target called soluble epoxide hydrolase works.”
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Blueprint for Neuroscience Research (Blueprint) awarded EicOsis a $4 million grant to advance compounds through Phase 1 clinical trials for diabetic neuropathic pain. A goal of the Blueprint Neurotherapeutics Network is to discover, develop and generate novel compounds that will ultimately be commercialized and benefit humankind.
In addition, EicOsis received support from the NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), and the support of two small business programs affiliated with the National Institute of Environmental Sciences: the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and the Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR).
“We are fortunate to receive all this support in the development of our oral medication for pain treatment through human Phase 1a trials, and now Open Philanthropy through human Phase 1b trials and beyond,” said Alan Buckpitt, a UC Davis retired professor of veterinary pharmacology and toxicology, and a principal investigator on the grants.
Nationally recognized for his achievements, Hammock is a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, which honors academic invention and encourages translations of inventions to benefit society. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the Entomological Society of America, and the recipient of scores of awards, including the first McGiff Memorial Awardee in Lipid Biochemistry; and the Bernard B. Brodie Award in Drug Metabolism, sponsored by the America Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.
Hammock, a member of the UC Davis faculty since 1980, received his doctorate in entomology and toxicology from UC Berkeley. He traces the history of his enzyme research to 1969 during his graduate student days in the John Casida laboratory. Hammock was researching insect developmental biology and green insecticides when he and colleague Sarjeet Gill, now a distinguished professor at UC Riverside, discovered the target enzyme in mammals that regulates epoxy fatty acids.
“My research led to the discovery that many regulatory molecules are controlled as much by degradation and biosynthesis,” Hammock said. “The epoxy fatty acids control blood pressure, fibrosis, immunity, tissue growth, depression, pain and inflammation to name a few processes.”
“Basically, I began by trying to figure out how a key enzyme, epoxide hydrolase, degrades a caterpillar's juvenile hormone, leading to metamorphosis from the larval stage to the adult insect,” Hammock. He asked himself these questions: “Does the enzyme occur in plants? Does it occur in mammals?" It does, and particularly as a soluble epoxide hydrolase in mammals.
"It is always important to realize that the most significant translational science we do in the university is fundamental science,” said Hammock, marveling that “this all began by asking how caterpillars turn into butterflies.”
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Chemist Kin Sing Stephen “Sing” Lee, a postdoctoral researcher and assistant project scientist in the Bruce Hammock lab in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, has won a coveted National Institutes of Health K99 Award, often called the “NIH Pathway to Independence Award” or the “Career Transition Award/Research Transition Award.” The award will enable Lee to shift rapidly into a permanent tenure-track or equivalent faculty position.
“The K99 award recipients are highly motivated, advanced postdoctoral research scientists,” said Hammock, a distinguished professor of entomology. This is the first ever K99 ever awarded in his lab since he joined the faculty in 1980. Molecular geneticist Joanna Chiu, assistant professor in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, is also a K99 recipient.
“The Pathway to Independence (PI) Award is designed to facilitate a timely transition from a mentored postdoctoral research position to a stable independent research position with independent NIH or other independent research support at an earlier stage than is currently the norm,” according to the NIH website. The PI award will provide up to five years of support consisting of two phases. The initial phase will provide one to two years of mentored support for postdoctoral research scientists. The second phase: up to three years of independent support contingent on securing independent tenure-track or equivalent research position.
Lee joined the Hammock lab in March of 2010 as a post-doctoral trainee of the Superfund Research Program, directed by Hammock. His research includes human soluble epoxide hydrolase inhibitors for treatment of neuropathic pain. He also mentors two graduate students and six undergraduate students.
Lee received his bachelor of science degree in chemistry in 2003 from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and his doctorate in organic chemistry from Michigan State University. “Interestingly enough, it was somewhat like receiving a Ph.D from Davis,” Hammock commented. Babak Borhan, Lee's mentor at Michigan State, did his Ph.D. with Hammock and with UC Davis chemistry professor Mark Kurth.
The title of the $131,680 K-99 grant from NIH's National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences is “Identifying the Receptors of Environmentally Sensitive Epoxy-Eicosanoids with AMS. “It is an ambitious project: he needs only three Nobel Prizes to complete it,” Hammock said, smiling. “The work involves innovative a red shifted photolabel and the use of a powerful technology termed accelerator mass spectrometry to find a receptor for pain and inflammatory mediators that has eluded other laboratories for over a decade.”
Since his arrival at UC Davis, Lee has reported the most powerful known inhibitors of the soluble epoxide hydrolase as drugs to treat pain and inflammation; helped develop a new theory for predicting the potency of drugs by quantitative evaluation of target occupancy; carried out drug metabolism studies; and collaborated with other laboratories at UC Davis and elsewhere in the world. Lee has published or co-authored work in a number of journals, including Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Journal of American Chemistry Society, Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry, Toxicology Letters,Journal of Cardiovascular and Pharmacology, Journal of Lipid Research, and the American Chemical Society's Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, among others.
He and his colleagues published two works in PNAS last year: “Epoxy Metabolites of Docosahexanenoic Acid (DHA) Inhibit Angiogenesis, Tumor Growth and Metastasis” and “Unique Mechanistic Insights into the Beneficial Effects of Soluble Epoxide Hydrolase Inhibitors in the Prevention of Cardiac Fibrosis.” The first study is particularly timely in suggesting that an omega-3 rich diet could help in cancer treatment.
A member of the American Chemical Society since 2003, Lee is a reviewer of Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry and Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry Letters, and a co-reviewer of the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry and Analytical Biochemistry.
This year he delivered presentations at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the SuperFund Research Program, held Nov. 12-14 in San Jose; and the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, April 26-30, San Diego; and the Eicosanoid Research Association meeting held March 9-12 in Baltimore. Previously he discussed his work at meetings of the American Chemical Society, and the International Chemical Congress of Pacific Basin Societies.
