Campus News

Medicinal chemistry professor to discuss cell therapies, regenerative medicine

Glenn Prestwich, presidential professor of medicinal chemistry and special presidential assistant for faculty entrepreneurism at the University of Utah, will present a seminar on March 6 at 3:30 p.m. in Room 101 of the Pharmacy South building. His talk is titled “Harnessing Hyaluronic Acid: From Cell Therapy to Reducing Inflammation.” The lecture is free and open to the public.

Prestwich’s research interests are highly translational and include interactions with physicians and with companies tasked with developing new therapies. His work includes developing therapeutic applications of anti-cancer lysophospholipids, anti-inflammatory sulfated polysaccharides and hyaluronan-derived synthetic extracellular matrices for 3-D cell culture and regenerative medicine.

Prestwich is a recipient of Alfred P. Sloan Research and Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar awards and was honored with the 1998 Paul Dawson Biotechnology Award from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy. He was elected as a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering in 2005.

Prestwich graduated with a bachelor of science in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 1970; he earned a doctorate in chemistry from Stanford University in 1974, followed by three years as a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow.