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Robert Buckheit, Ph.D., President and Chief Scientific Officer
Research Interests
During his career Dr. Robert Buckheit has been involved in both cancer and infectious disease research and his laboratory research interests continue in these areas. Specifically, Bob has developed significant research programs at ImQuest BioSciences in the understanding of anti-infective drug resistance mechanisms and the development and application of topical microbicides.
Drug resistance has emerged as one of the leading causes of virologic failures to anti-infective drug regimens and an understanding of the processes by which viruses become resistant to therapeutics as well as developing means to manage the development of resistance and to potentially utilize the development of resistance in a positive therapeutic manner have been the subject of investigation at ImQuest BioSciences. Bob has published a wide variety of manuscripts describing the work performed in the Anti-Infective Resistance Program at ImQuest, most recently including a review in Expert Opinion on Investigational New Drugs on viral resistance and fitness which was published in August of 2004. Currently ImQuest is developing methodology to rapidly evaluate the potential of new compounds to select for drug resistant virus strains and methodology for the assessment of the fitness of virus strains selected in the laboratory as well as from human clinical trial samples. Research is also underway to further understand the role of compensatory mutations which enhance virus fitness in the presence of mutations that result in crippled viral enzymes.
Topical microbicide therapies have gained increasing visibility over the past several years as the National Institutes of Health and other world organizations, as well as The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, have begun establishing significant funding to support the development of microbicides in the developing world. Bob pioneered in vitro studies on microbicides in the 1990's while working on NIH contracts devoted to microbicide development and has continued to define appropriate and efficient testing methodology and algorithms to address the specialized development of these therapeutic agents. At the recent Alliance for the Development of Microbicides meeting held in Washington DC in January 2005, Bob was invited to speak on the development and use of in vitro assays required for the development of topical microbicides. ImQuest's Topical Microbicide Development Program, possesses the needed skills to efficiently define a potential microbicide and to bring resources to bear in order to address formulation issues, solubility, application and specialized toxicology required to enter human clinical trials. ImQuest is currently working on projects to define and develop novel microbicide candidates in an attempt to enhance the microbicide product pipeline and bring new therapies toward human clinical trials. These new molecules include the dual acting NNRTI/entry inhibitor SJ-3366 developed by Samjin Pharmaceuticals, the NCp7 zinc finger inhibitors developed by the laboratory of Dr. Ettore Appella at the NCI and ISIS 5320 developed by Isis Pharmaceuticals. In addition, ImQuest research is being devoted towards the development of combination microbicide therapies (multiple anti-HIV compounds to prevent HIV transmission as well as combinations of agents directed at HIV and other STIs) and an understanding of the use of microbicide therapies to prevent the transmission of drug resistant virus strains. |
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| Meet ImQuest Life Sciences's Staff at the Following Scientific Meetings: |
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International Conference on Antiviral Research (Palm Springs, CA, May 2007)
American Association of Pharmaceutical Science-Biotechnology (San Diego, CA June 2007)
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DART-HIV (Cancun, Mexico, December 2006) |
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Internscience Conference of Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (Chicago, September 2007)
DART-HCV (Hawaii, December 2007)
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