December 17, 2025
Members of the Fuchs and Adu-Ampratwum labs celebrated the holidays with our end of semester group lunch near campus. Looking forward to another productive year in 2026!
Members of the Fuchs and Adu-Ampratwum labs celebrating a holiday lunch.
December 15, 2025
Dai-Chi You and Kehtal Surana have completed their lab rotations and are joining the Fuchs lab! Welcome to the lab!
November 20, 2025
Ross successfully defended his thesis entitled “Synthesis of anti-HIV Integrase Inhibitors and Strategies to Mitigate Lenacapavir Resistance.” Way to go, Dr. Bockbrader!
Ross (in the suit), with lab members, friends, and family, after completing his thesis exam.
October 2, 2025
The Division of Medicinal Chemistry & Pharmacognosy held their annual research retreat at the OSU Energy Advancement and Innovation Center. Nicole Benson gave the talk for the Fuchs lab and Yaning Li presented a poster on his work.
September 23, 2025
Yaning Li presented his second year literature seminar entitled “Dual Orexin Receptor Antagonists: A Novel Therapeutic Approach for the Treatment of Insomnia” in the Division seminar series. Great job, Yaning!
September 1, 2025
Our Program Project Grant (PPG) on natural products in cancer was funded by the NIH! Congratulations to our research team, which is led by Dr. Doug Kinghorn! It is a privilege to be a part of an outstanding collaborative team like this one.
PPG investigators at a scientific meeting in August of 2025 (Photo Credit: Nick Oberlies).
August 26, 2025
The Autumn semester starts today! Three students, Dai-Chi You, Austing Peacock, and Jake Tomkovicz, will be rotating in the Fuchs lab during the course of the semester. We are looking forward to working with you!
August 17-21
The American Chemical Society Fall 2025 national Meeting was held in Washington, DC. Nicole Benson presented a poster at the meeting and Yaning Li also attended.
August 13, 2025
Jeff successfully defended his thesis entitled “Medicinal chemistry efforts toward novel and improved therapeutics targeting HIV-1 integrase and HIV-1 capsid” and will receive his PhD in December. He’ll be starting a postdoc at Eli Lilly this fall. Congratulations, Dr. Lockwood!
Dr. Jeff Lockwood after his successful thesis defense.
July 17, 2025
Olivia Chase, an undergraduate student at Capital University, presented her work as a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) recipient in the Fuchs and Adu-Ampratwum labs. The title of her talk was “Ligand-directed labeling of HIV capsid protein.” Great job this summer, Olivia!
June 6-8, 2025
Katie, Jeff, Emmanuel, Yaning, Nia, and Kiley participated in the 2025 Mid-Atlantic Graduate Student Symposium (MAGSS) at Purdue University. Yaning, Nia, and Kiley all made poster presentations!
April 23, 2025
Dr. Fuchs was presented with the Graduate Faculty Mentor Award in the Health Sciences from the OSU Graduate School at the Graduate School Awards ceremony. Thanks to the Graduate School for putting on a great event and supporting all of our graduate students and graduate faculty members!
April 11, 2025
Katie successfully defended her thesis entitled “Synthetic medicinal chemistry efforts toward the improved potency, solubility, and mechanistic elucidation for anti-cancer phyllanthusmin derivatives and anti-APEC small molecules and peptides.” She will receive her PhD in May and will be starting her postdoc at Kenyon College this summer! Congratulations, Dr. Starr!
Dr. Katie Starr (center) at the OSU graduation ceremony in May of 2025.
February 18, 2025
Nicole presented her fourth-year seminar entitled “Synthesis, enantiomeric resolution, and derivatization of (−)-didesmethylrocaglamide: A promising anticancer natural product.” Great work, Nicole!
December 21, 2024
The graduate students and Dr. Fuchs celebrated the holidays and the end of the semester with a lunch at a campus restaurant. Thanks to all of our lab members for a great 2024!
December 6, 2024
Yaning Li officially joined the lab today after completing his research rotations. Congratulations and welcome to the lab, Yaning!
November 13, 2024
The College of Pharmacy held its annual Research Day at the Fawcett Center on campus today. Katie presented a great talk on the phyllanthusmin project. Jeff, Ross, and Nicole all presented research posters. Congratulations to Jeff for taking home one of the poster awards!
October 4, 2024
The College of Pharmacy held its annual Research Day at the Fawcett Center on campus today. Katie presented a great talk on the phyllanthusmin project. Jeff, Ross, and Nicole all presented research posters. Congratulations to Jeff for taking home one of the poster awards!
August 19, 2024
Welcome to our incoming first year graduate students! Autumn semester rotations for our Medicinal Chemistry & Pharmacognosy students were announced today. Akash Haria will be rotating in the Fuchs/Adu-Ampratwum labs during the 1st session of the semester. Yaning Li will be rotating with us during the 2nd session. Good luck to all of our students at the start of this new academic year!
June 14-16, 2024
Jeff, Katie, and Kiley attended the Mid-Atlantic Graduate Student Symposium (MAGSS) meeting at Duquesne University, in Pittsburgh, PA along with several other members of our Medicinal Chemistry & Pharmacognosy division. Jeff and Katie gave talks on their research and Kiley presented a poster. Keynote speakers at the meeting included Nicholas Meanwell and Derek Lowe. It’s great to be able to participate in a regional meeting focused on drug discovery and medicinal chemistry! Congratulations on a successful meeting.
May 15, 2024
Nicole received news today that she was selected as a recipient of a Pre-Doctoral Fellowship in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the American Foundation for Pharmaceutical Education (AFPE)! Congratulations, Nicole!
May 6, 2024
Ross started his summer internship at Zoetis Inc. in Kalamazoo, MI today. This is an exciting opportunity to learn new skills in an industrial environment. Thanks to Zoetis for providing this Organic and Medicinal Chemistry internship!
May 3, 2024
Matt Brauser (left, Fuchs lab) and Jake Schmitt (right, Mitton-Fry lab) received the BSPS Medicinal Chemistry & Pharmacognosy awards at the 2024 BSPS End of Year Celebration from Dr. Nicole Kwiek! Matt will be headed to Indiana University this summer to start his PhD studies in Chemistry. Good luck, Matt!
January 1, 2024
Daniel is now officially a Research Assistant Professor in the Division of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy here at OSU! Congratulations, Daniel!
December 8, 2023
The Fuchs lab celebrated the end of the semester and the start of the Holiday season with a group meal at a local restaurant. Emmanuel (Emma) also officially joined the lab today after his rotation. Congratulations and welcome to the lab, Emma!
November 7, 2023
Daniel and Dr. Fuchs participated in the Undergraduate Research Fair organized by Dr. Chris Coss and put on by the College of Pharmacy. We met a lot of great students at the event. It’s exciting to see so much excitement for undergraduate research at OSU!
September 29, 2023
The Division of Medicinal Chemistry & Pharmacognosy hosted a Division Retreat at the Blackwell Inn and Conference Center on campus. Ross, Jeff, and Nicole presented posters on their research projects. Katie delivered the talk for the Fuchs lab on the phyllanthusmin project. Really enjoyed getting to see and hear about the science that is going on in our buildings.
August 15, 2023
The Division of Medicinal Chemistry & Pharmacognosy held its annual summer picnic to welcome our new first-year graduate students and celebrate the accomplishments of our current students. Katie and Ross received Division awards for their accomplishments over the past year. This includes funding to help them attend an upcoming meeting. First-year students Maggie Raymond and Emmanuel Ayim will be doing in the Fuchs lab this semester.
July 31 – August 4, 2023
Ross, Jeff, Daniel, and Dr. Fuchs attended the 7th International Conference on Retroviral Integration in Boulder, Colorado. Ross and Jeff presented a poster at the meeting and Daniel delivered an invited lecture. It was great to hear about the latest research in the fields of HIV-1 Integrase and HIV-1 Capsid and to hang out with our collaborators in the Kvaratskhelia lab at CU Anschutz. Thank you to the meeting organizers!
July 19, 2023
Nicole successfully completed her candidacy exam today! This is a significant milestone. Congratulations, Nicole!
June 22, 2023
The lab gets to start moving into our newly renovated lab spaces in the Riffe Building!
May 22, 2023
Matt Brauser joined the lab today. Matt is an undergraduate student in the College of Pharmacy Bachelor of Science in Pharmaceutical Sciences program and received a fellowship through the OSU Comprehensive Cancer Center/College of Pharmacy CREATES program. Thank you to the CREATES program and welcome aboard, Matt!
May 7, 2023
Tosin Ayinde and Brittany Mize received their doctoral degrees at the OSU graduation ceremony in Ohio Stadium. Tosin will be moving on to a postdoctoral position at NIH and Brittany will be teaching at Otterbein University. Congratulations, Dr. Ayinde and Dr. Mize!
April 20, 2023
Tosin Ayinde has been named the 2023 OSU Next Generation Innovator of the Year by the OSU Office of Research/Enterprise for Research, Innovation and Knowledge. Check out the photo from the ceremony (below) and a video highlighting the work of the 3 finalists for this award (Video Profiles of the Early Career Innovator of the Year Nominees). Way to go, Tosin!
April 12, 2023
Today was the 2023 College of Pharmacy Research Day! Jeff Lockwood and Ross Bockbrader won 2nd prize for their poster “Design of HIV-1 allosteric integrase inhibitor via indole and quinoline scaffold as an approach toward mitigating antiviral drug resistance” in the Graduate Student category. In addition, Katie Galgozy presented her poster on “Synthesis and biological evaluation of novel antibacterial small molecules and peptides against APEC” and Nicole Benson presented her poster entitled “Synthesis, isolation, and structural modification of didesmethylrocaglamide: A biologically active flavagline natural product with promising anticancer activity.” Overall, it was a great event. Nice job, everyone!
April 6, 2023
Congratulations to Brittney Mize for successfully defending her dissertation entitled “Medicinal Chemistry Drug Discovery Efforts Towards Anticancer Leads: The Development of CDK9-Targeting PROTAC and PHY-34 Analogues.”
April 5, 2023
Our manuscript “Bifunctional degraders of cyclin dependent kinase 9 (CDK9): Probing the relationship between linker length, properties, and selective protein degradation” appeared online today (link to the publication). Congratulations to Bo, Andrew, Brittney, Tosin, and the rest of our collaborative team on this great work!
March 26-30
Busy week for the lab! Brittney, Tosin, Jeff, Katie, Ross, and Nicole were in Indianapolis to present posters at the 2023 American Chemical Society Meeting. Tosin also gave her 4th year seminar (over Zoom) on her protein degrader work in our All-College seminar program. Excellent job, everyone!
March 23, 2023
Congratulations to Tosin Ayinde for successfully defending her dissertation entitled “Drug Development Efforts Towards Discovery, Characterization and Development of Efficacious Anti-Virulence Agents Against Bacteria and Protein Degraders for Acute Myeloid Leukemia.”