Dr. Darrell Davis

Darrell R. Davis, PhD

Academic Information

Departments Professor - Medicinal Chemistry , Adjunct Professor - Biochemistry

Academic Office Information

darrell.davis@pharm.utah.edu

801-581-7006

Lab

Research Interests

  • Optimizing the activity and selectivity of a lead therapeutic with activity against diverse viruses

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Research in our laboratory is directed toward optimizing the activity and selectivity of a lead therapeutic with activity against diverse viruses.  

Targeting the translation of viral mRNAs that are obligated to use human cellular processes can provide therapeutics against coronavirus variants and future pandemic viruses.   We are elucidating the activity of a class of antivirals having a novel mechanism of action with the expectation this research could provide new therapies.

Reduction of COVID-19 viral infection in Vero cells by compounds DD011-E2, and DD011-E1. The lead compounds are an enantiomeric pair where the E1 isomer is almost inactive against SARS-CoV-2, the EC50 for E2  = 140 nM .  Similar differential activity is seen against other coronaviruses (hCoV-OC43), as well as phylogenetically distant viruses such as HCV and Zika.  A common pattern of activity supports a conserved, host-targeted mechanism of antiviral activity.

RELATED LINKS

FAR Page

Research Lab

College of Pharmacy

Education History

Undergraduate University of Puget Sound
 BS
Doctoral Training University of Utah
 PhD

Selected Publications

Journal Article

  1. Galindo-Murillo, R., Davis, D.R., Cheatham, T.E. (2016) Probing the influence of hypermodified residues within the tRNALys,3 anticodon stem loop interacting with the A-loop primer sequence from HIV-1. Biochem. Biophys. Acta. 1860, 607-617.

  2. Henriksen, N.M., Hayatshahi, H.S., Davis, D.R., Cheatham, T.E. (2014) Structural and energetic analysis of 2-aminobenzimidazole inhibitors in complex with the hepatitis C virus IRES RNA using molecular dynamics simulations. J. Chem. Inf. Model. 54, 1758-1772.

  3. Henriksen, N.M., Davis, D.R., and Cheatham, T.E (2012) Molecular dynamics re-refinement of two different small RNA loop structures using the original NMR data suggest a common structure. J. Biomol. NMR, 53, 321-339.

    More Selected Publications