Discoveries in Dr. Lakshmi Kotra’s lab may one day make a difference to those managing diabetes or suffering from malaria.
In his diabetes research Kotra worked on a chemical compound that could work like insulin but could be taken orally — one pill a day or perhaps one pill a week — to increase glucose uptake into cells of diabetics. Such a drug would eliminate the need for insulin pumps and injections many diabetics must endure to help their bodies absorb sugar properly.
“This was unlike any drug discovery project I’ve worked with, the complexity of it at the basic science level,” says Kotra, an associate professor who specializes in synthetic chemistry, biochemistry, computer modeling and drug discovery. “We are quite excited about this work. Diabetes is an epidemic, and becoming more so.”
And there’s more potentially promising news for diabetics coming from the Kotra Research Group lab in Sullivan Science Building: graduate students and postdoctoral fellows also are hard at work examining potential drug treatments for nerve damage commonly caused by Type 1 diabetes. The condition, called diabetic neuropathy, causes sensory loss, pain and poor wound healing that can lead to lower-limb amputation.
“In one to two years, we hope to be in the animal model stage,” he says.
Can we make a real contribution? Can we make a change?
Before coming to UNCG in 2007, Kotra made a name for himself at the University of Toronto and the Toronto General Research Institute. Using a supercomputer/visualization center specially dedicated for drug research, a team of scientists led by Kotra at the Molecular Design and Information Technology Center made a potentially life-saving discovery — a synthetic compound that targets and kills malaria parasites, including a drug-resistant strain.
Today Kotra continues his research in antimalarial compounds at UNCG and still directs the center in Toronto, traveling back and forth as needed. Recently he struck up a collaboration with the Australian Army Malaria Institute to conduct advanced studies.
“In Australia and Canada now, we are evaluating these compounds in mice,” Kotra says. “We have a good indication that they are working.” If all goes well, Kotra hopes to progress to studies with monkeys in the next two years, a step that would take another two to three years to complete. “If that goes well,” he adds, “we’ll be well-positioned to initiate clinical trials on humans.”
All exciting news in a field where it takes years, decades even, for a drug to make it from a lab to a pharmacy shelf. It takes time, careful planning and persistence. “For people like us, it’s more than the salary. It’s, ‘Can we make a real contribution? Can we make a change?’” he says. “Those real discoveries are hard to make.”
Photography by Chris English and David Wilson, University Relations
