Alexander Tropsha received his M.S. in Chemistry (1982, summa cum laude) and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry (1986) from Moscow State University, Moscow, USSR. He served as a Research Associate at Moscow State University until 1987, and as a Research Associate in Moscow's institute of Biotechnology until 1988. In 1989, he became a Post- Doctoral Fellow in the Brain & Development Research Center (BDRC) at UNC's School of Medicine. In 1991, he accepted positions as Assistant Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Director of the Laboratory for Molecular Modeling in the UNC School of Pharmacy. Dr. Tropsha also holds an appointment as a BDRC Research Scientist and as Research Fellow in the Supercomputing Institute of the North Carolina Supercomputing Center. He received the 1992 Tripos Academic User of the Year Award and the 1993 Chairman's Award from a local section of the American Chemical Society.
3D image of a receptor molecule.
Under Dr. Tropsha's supervision, UNC's Laboratory for Molecular Modeling has rapidly become one of the leading academic institutions of its kind. Supported by all major molecular modeling software and hardware companies, the lab currently serves as the UNC Core Facility for molecular modeling. For several years Dr. Tropsha has served as an Instructor for the highly acclaimed ACS short course in Molecular Modeling. He has authored more than 20 publications on the development and application of molecular modeling to biological problems. In 1993, he conducted two workshops for HCC and HRPI scientists.
Dr. Tropsha focuses on computer-assisted drug design, simulation of molecular dynamics, and mechanisms of protein-protein interaction and protein folding. His approach to modeling dopaminergic receptors includes combination of ligand-based pharmacophore modeling, prediction of the receptor structure from its sequence, and structure-based modeling and ligand design. Application of ligand-based modeling approaches affords generation of ligand structures in their pharmacophoric conformations, that is, those complementary to the receptor binding site. This information helps ensure that the putative receptor structure (predicted from its sequence) contains the active site that is complementary to the receptor ligands. Based on this knowledge of the receptor structure, new ligands are designed, and using various specialized computational techniques, their activity is evaluated. This approach requires substantial computational resources, and permanent interactions with experimental scientists involved in studying various aspects of the chemistry, biology, and pharmacology of dopaminergic receptors and their ligands. This combination of computational and experimental resources has already shown its merit in the targeted design of novel ligands.
Dr. Tropsha works closely with Dr. Nichols at the Medical Chemistry and Pharmacognosy at Purdue University and Dr. Oxford. at Department of Physiology in the Medical Science Research Building at UNC.
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