The journey from lab bench to patient bedside can be demanding and difficult. UNC-Chapel Hill has the people, tools, and resources to translate research more effectively and efficiently.
Lindsey James came to Carolina to get her PhD in 2005 and never left.
“I thought I’d be here for five years and then return to the Northeast where my family is,” she says. “But I got pulled in.”
Eighteen years later the chemist runs a lab in the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy exploring medicinal chemistry and epigenetics with the goal of making strides in cancer care and treatment. It’s a method of research defined as translational — bridging the gap between promising early-stage science and the development of products and services that benefit society.
“My dad is a physician, and I grew up with an interest in medicine,” James says. “Translational research gives me a clear picture of how the efforts in my lab can directly help people. While developing a new drug is a lofty goal, we hope to at least take incremental steps towards translational discoveries that could ultimately help patients.”
James and her team develop small molecules that target specific proteins believed to play roles in the development of cancers. They focus on proteins that are mutated or over-expressed, for example, which commonly leads to disease. The lab creates molecules that bind to these proteins and block their function, which could lead to new therapeutic targets for cancer treatment.
These small-molecule tools could be useful against an array of cancers. James collaborates with UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers to test the molecules in as many diseases as possible to evaluate their efficacy. The continuous development of new molecules requires funding and resources.
This part of project development diverts time and energy from conducting the research itself. Grant writing and editing along with the additional back-and-forth communications with funding agencies can take months, even years. UNC-Chapel Hill strives to offer its own research translation resources to reduce the struggle involved in advancing research. And James has found great success in pursuing those offerings.
In 2018, James began her funding relationship with the School of Pharmacy’s Eshelman Institute for Innovation. The Institute has awarded her three grants over three years for a variety of projects — one in 2018 and two in 2020.
Then, James learned about a new resource at the time called Pinnacle Hill, a partnership between UNC-Chapel Hill and Deerfield Management to facilitate research translation by providing funding and development support for select projects. She applied, and her research was chosen as Pinnacle Hill’s first project in 2019.
“I was intrigued by the prospect of advancing my research beyond what I would be able to do in my own lab,” she says. “Our team developed exciting preliminary data suggesting that we had compounds for a target in multiple myeloma that could be worth taking into preclinical development. I was excited to partner with Pinnacle Hill to do so.”
Over the next three years, James secured funding and support from multiple other research translation resources at Carolina, all the while receiving support and guidance from AdvanTx, an initiative to advance therapeutics research from the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research (OVCR).
Mentors with AdvanTx encouraged James to continue pursuing funding from programs and initiatives at UNC-Chapel Hill and guided her in choosing the best options for her research. In 2022, she received funding and development support from the Office of Technology Commercialization alongside continued support from OVCR. Most recently, she was selected as a finalist for Creativity Hubs seed funding for her team’s exploration of a new mechanism to degrade proteins.
While James currently has two major National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants that sustain her work, these additional Carolina resources have given her a break from applying for more federal funding.
“The research space I’m in is competitive,” James says. “I was worried that if I only focused on securing NIH funding than I may lose my window of discovery because it takes a long time for NIH grants to get reviewed, approved, and funded.”
Making connections with Carolina resources has kept James informed on what additional opportunities may be available to her. She has intentionally surrounded herself with people who have experience in translational research and works collaboratively with experts who can elevate her projects, which is the ultimate goal of research translation.
“We consider every discovery in the lab and think about how to best pursue each one to have a meaningful impact on human health,” she says. “I encourage other researchers to take advantage of the many resources UNC-Chapel Hill has to offer to advance their own translational work.”
Lindsey James is an assistant professor in the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy and a member of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.