Dr. Joanna E. Burdette, Professor and Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Education, College of Pharmacy, University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC)
Core Leader – Core 1
Dr. Burdette directs Core A (biological testing of compounds isolated in Projects 1-3 and synthesized in Core B). Over the last five years, she has conducted the biological evaluation of several potential anticancer agents from this P01 project, including on silvestrol, strebloside, and several phyllanthusmin and verticillin derivatives. She trained as a pharmacognosy Ph.D. student in the NIH/University of Illinois at Chicago Botanical Dietary Supplements Center, and was then the recipient of a NCI, NIH Postdoctoral Training Fellowship in Oncogenesis and Developmental Biology Fellowship at Northwestern University. Dr. Burdette has been involved in working with collaborative teams to study the biological mechanisms of natural products for almost two decades. In addition to conducting in vitro bioassays, her laboratory investigates in vivo efficacy using toxicity assays, and conducts in vivo xenograft assays in syngeneic and PDX models primarily focused on ovarian cancer, a tumor type for which she has considerable expertise. When low micromolar to nanomolar potency compounds with unique chemical structures that display in vivo activity against either xenografts or syngeneic models, Dr. Burdette pursues target identification using tagged probes and mass spectrometry, RNA sequencing for pathway analysis, and mechanism of action studies validated by removing the target with CRISPR. Dr. Leslie N. Aldrich, Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry, UIC, formally joined the Core A team in 2018 to bring high-content phenotypic and autophagy screening capability to the program project.