TOXI Program at the 264th ACS National Meeting
Message from Chair
Greetings to all TOXI members! The 2022 Fall ACS meeting In Chicago was a great success. It was our first true in-person meeting since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The meeting was conducted in person, with a smaller number of participants joining online. I was very grateful for the opportunity to interact with other TOXI members during the conference, share a meal with symposia speakers at an excellent local restaurant, and present Cindy Burrows with the Founders Award. Please read on for a report of the program put together by our tireless Program Chair Michael Trakselis. My special congratulations to the graduate and postdoc awardees whose scientific accomplishments are a major driver for the Division.
We look forward to the 2023 National meeting in San Francisco (August 13-17, 2023) and invite proposals for symposia and other activities next year. What would you like to see as part of our annual gathering? What areas of chemical toxicology should be covered? Would you like to propose a panel discussion, career development activities, or a workshop? How could we make the meeting more interactive? Please contact me at trety001@umn.edu or Michael at michael_trakselis@baylor.edu with your ideas and suggestions.
Please make sure to participate in the 2022 TOXI elections. The nominees for positions opening on the TOXI executive committee are listed in this newsletter. All members are urged to cast their votes. I would like to thank the nominees who have agreed to contribute their time and energy to support the Division. Any TOXI members interested in becoming involved in the leadership and organization of the Division are encouraged to reach out to members of the Executive Committee directly at any time.
TOXI Program at the 264th ACS National Meeting
ACS Fall 2022 Chicago and online hybrid National Meeting Program; August 21-25, 2022
The TOXI division finally got back together with a large in-person attendance and a small number of virtual attendees for the 2022 Fall National ACS meeting in Chicago. The meeting was held Sunday-Wednesday with scientific sessions, award sessions, and division business meetings. Posters and talks were presented live, and many recorded presentations were also available during and after the meeting. The Program Committee and the TOXI division thank NIH-NIEHS (R13ES034642-01), Chemical Research in Toxicology, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Bristol Myers Squibb, ACS-MMPG, and TOXI members for generous funding of our program.
The meeting kicked off on Sunday with two award symposia. Congratulations to Prof. James Galligan at
University of Arizona for the Chemical Research in Toxicology Young Investigator Award for his work on identifying posttranslational modifications within the metabolic proteome that impact glycolytic metabolites, including a dangerous electrophilic compound, methylglyoxal. He organized an exciting symposium that included Rebecca Sheck (Tufts U.) who spoke about her work on detecting glycation as a hallmark of molecular aging. Mogens Johannsen (Aarhus U.) discussed his efforts to monitor several cellular glycolytic metabolites from retrospective illicit drug samples collected during criminal investigations. Yael David (MSKCC) showed her lab’s efforts using a variety of chemical biology approaches to characterize nonenzymatic chemical modifications that occur on histones that affect the chromatin architecture. Andrew James (U. Cambridge) presented virtually to discuss their efforts to develop mass spectrometry probes to investigate the diversity of Acyl-CoAs and their ability to nonenzymatically modify proteins and impact protein association/aggregation processes related to pathologies. Finally, Jordan Meier (NIH) spoke about epigenetic mechanisms to regulate metabolism including RNA acetylation. Congratulations to James on a well-deserved award!
Prof. Cynthia Burrows from University of Utah was recognized with the TOXI Division Founders’ Award for her
outstanding work on oxidative DNA damage and repair over several decades. Prof. Burrows organized a symposium featuring a broad scope of research surrounding genomic modifications that impact cellular functions and organismal health. This included reversible RNA methylation that can impact mammalian early development as well as direct enhanced plant crop growth and yields as described by Chuan He (U. Chicago). Sheila David (UC Davis) is a long-term collaborator of Dr. Burrows and discussed the roles of the NEIL family of proteins in removing lesions near G-quadruplex sequences. Natalia Tretyakova (U. Minnesota) described her ongoing multi-omics approaches to detecting epigenetic marks in DNA and their roles in cancer. Finally, Aaron Fleming (U. Utah), a longtime member of the Burrows lab, described new nanopore sequencing approaches for detecting modified rRNA following cellular stressors. Dr. Burrows was a former Keynote Speaker in the Division in 2020 and her ties to TOXI continue to strengthen with this most deserving award and recognition.
Nicholas Meanwell (Bristol Meyers Squibb) and Fred Guengerich (Vanderbilt) organized a session on “Artificial Intelligence in Drug Discovery Design, Development, and Safety Assessment” co-sponsored with the MEDI division and the ACS-MMPG on Monday morning. Patrick Walters (Relay Therapeutics Inc.) and Christina de Bryun Kops (Universitat Wien) highlighted emerging areas of AI that are actively contributing to drug discovery and the use of machine learning approaches to predict more diverse metabolite structures, respectively. We then had Joshua Swamidaas (Wash U.) discuss how machine learning approaches can identify altered structures and substructures that may be bioactivated into reactive species. Jonathan Goodman (U. Cambridge) discussed a variety of principles to utilize machine learning for use in predictive molecular toxicology to avoid animal testing. Finally, Zhichao Liu (FDA) described how the FDA is utilizing AI to speed up their drug review process using a SafeAI framework. At the end of this session, we invited five trainees, Andrew Kellum (UCR), Tanhaul Islam (U. Minn.), Wenyan Xu (UCR), Dominique Gaffney (Arizona), and Andrew Rajczewski (U. Minn), to give rapid 1-minute talks that advertised their work for the upcoming poster session.
The second invited symposium discussing “Current Approaches to COVID19-Drug Discovery & Safety Assessment” was co-organized by Ujjal Sarkar (Cerevel Therapeutics) and Zucai Suo (Florida State U.) occurred on Monday Afternoon. This symposium included talks on the development of cytokine-storm inhibitors to mitigate COVID-19 infection by Zucai Suo, investigating the best timing for prescribing nucleoside analogs to combat COVID-19 infection by Ashley Brown (U. Florida CoM), a synopsis on the Pfizer’s structure-activity relationship and toxicological profiling for the development of Paxlovid to inhibit the SARS-Cov2 by Amit Kalgutkar (Pfizer), and novel drug screening candidates including a promising anticancer tyrosine kinase inhibitor that also inhibit viral entry into the host cell by Shirit Einav (Stanford SoM). Again, we had four additional students give rapid 1-minute poster talks to advertise their science, including Chaoxing Liu (UCR), Erin Jennings (Arizona), Yizhi Fu (Vanderbilt), and Luke Erber (U. Minn).
The ACS-wide Sci-Mix session that includes posters from all participating Divisions hosted 18 TOXI posters from selected students and postdocs. Presenters in this session got an extra opportunity to share their work with a broader audience.
Tuesday was a busy day for the TOXI division with two symposia, a keynote address, a poster session, a TOXI reception, and a business meeting. The Tuesday morning session included 13 selected talks for a Student and Post-Doctoral Scholar Symposium that had a diverse range of topics, including glycation, multiomics, detoxification, glyoxalase 1, pulmonary surfactants, activation of 1-nitropyrene, G-quadruplex structures, mitochondrial DNA repair, genomic oxidative guanines, Pt-induced crosslinks, Pol η proteome, BER mechanisms, and aflatoxin signatures.
Oral Presentation Awards
Arnold Groehler (Postdoc, Orlando D. Schärer Lab, UNIST, Korea) “Monitoring the Formation and Repair Kinetics of Platinum Drug-Induced DNA-DNA Cross-Links by Comprehensive Ultra Performance Liquid Chromatograph-Selective Ion Monitoring (UPLC-SIM) Assays”
Songjun Xiao (Postdoc, Cynthia Burrows Lab, U. Utah) “Sequencing Oxidative Guanine Damage in DNA using Click Chemistry”
Mitchell DiPasquale (Graduate Student, Drew Marquardt Lab, U. Windsor) “Vitamin E acetate in pulmonary surfactant: Biophysical explanation of the EVALI epidemic”
Treshaun Sutton (Graduate Student, Sarah Delany Lab, Brown University) “Removal of Lesions in NCPs by BER Enzymes is Dependent on the Initiation Step”
On Tuesday afternoon, Yinsheng Wang (UC Riverside) organized a symposium on the “Chemical Biology of DNA Damage and Repair”. In this session, we heard from Kent Gates (U. Missouri) on the diversity of chemistry associated with interstrand cross-links derived from abasic sites; Linlin Zhao (UC Riverside), who focused on the detection, recognition, and repair of abasic sites that exist solely in the mitochondria; Stephen Lloyd (Oregon Health & Science U.) who is defining hepatitis B and aflatoxin mutational signatures; Sarah Delany (Brown) who discussed DNA repair processes in the context of chromatin; and Yinsheng Wang (UC Riverside) on DNA-protein crosslinking sequencing approaches to genomic wide mapping of lesions and proteins localized those sites for repair. We thank Thermo Fisher Scientific for providing funding to specifically support this session!
At the end of this session, we were honored to have Wei Yang (NIH) as our Keynote Speaker for the entire TOXI program. Wei discussed her laboratory’s work using time-resolved X-ray crystallography to identify the role of novel transient metal ions for DNA polymerase and diverse endonuclease enzymology. As a Division, we thank Wei for accepting this honor based on her outstanding contributions in revealing the structure-function mechanisms of these enzymes involved in DNA repair.
The TOXI Poster session and Reception were held Tuesday night in the McCormick Place Hall. The Division had about 45 posters from students, postdocs, and professors covering a broad range of topics. The TOXI Reception included a walking dinner with carving stations of tri-tip and turkey breast as well as roasted vegetables and various salads. The TOXI Poster session was well attended and had great energy, with junior and senior investigators actively discussing the many topics on the posters.
Students and postdocs presenting during the TOXI Reception and Poster Session.
Late Tuesday night, the Division of Chemical Toxicology held its open business meeting to discuss past and future business and events relevant to the Division. There was an excellent turnout of more than 60 participants to hear about the year in review, nominations for upcoming elections, and to give out student and postdoc awards from the meeting. The awards were graciously funded from a combination of industrial support from Thermo Fisher Scientific and Bristol Meyers Squibb, an R13 grant from the NIH, and member donations.
Poster Presentation Awards
Giovannia Barbosa (Graduate Student, Brown U.) “Effect of nucleosome occupancy on base excision repair”
Erik Carlson (Postdoc, Harvard U.) “Biochemical characterization of colibactin-DNA interstrand crosslink formation using short oligonucleotides”
Luke Erber (Postdoc, U. Minnesota) “Repair of Cisplatin-Induced DNA-Protein Crosslinks in Human Cells”
Piyanka Hettiarachchi (Graduate Student, U. Kansas) “Effects of rotenone neurotoxicity on dopamine release and uptake in zebrafish”
Erin Jennings (Graduate Student, U. Arizona) “Regulatory Role of the Glyoxalase Cycle in Inflammation”
Alec Kramer (Undergraduate Student, Baylor U.) “Implications of human microglia neuroinflammatory response due to pesticide exposure”
Leticia Reque (Graduate Student, Cal. State U. Northridge) “Investigating the molecular events in response to Glyoxalase1 inhibition in breast and prostate cancer cells”
Kathleen Urrutia (Graduate Student, UC Riverside) “Preferential binding and cleavage from 5′-ends for human mitochondrial genome maintenance nuclease 1 (MGME1) is conferred by a phosphate group”
Travel Awards
The TOXI division also gave Travel Awards based on an application and strength of the submitted abstract. Congratulations to the following Award Winners!
Andrea Andress (Graduate Student, Penn Med) “Mechanism of perfluorooctanoic acid driven hyperandrogenism in polycystic ovary syndrome”
Alicia Crisalli (Graduate Student, U. Rhode Island) “Conformational heterogeneity of the fluoroaminofluorene-deoxyguanine adduct (dG-FAF) in epigenetically modified sequence contexts”
Natalia Gutierrez (Graduate Student, Wash U.) “Post-labeling assay for the detection of photo-induced non-adjacent anti cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers that form in G-Quadruplex forming sequences”
Piyanka Hettiarachchi (Graduate Student, U. Kansas) “Effects of rotenone neurotoxicity on dopamine release and uptake in zebrafish”
Alexander Hurben (Graduate Student, U. Minn.) “Controlling Protein Glycation with Spatiotemporal Control”
David McKinzey (Graduate Student, Baylor U.) “Studies of Biochemical Function and Structure of MCM8/9”
Feng Tang (Postdoctoral, UC. Riverside) “Proximity proteomics profiling the interacting proteome of DNA polymerase η”
Marissa Trujillo (Graduate Student, U. Arizona) “Glyoxalase 1 promotes adipogenesis in 3T3-L1 pre-adipocytes”
Wenxin Zhao (Graduate Student, UC Riverside) “Uncovering the role of glutamate in mitochondrial transcription factor A facilitated AP-DNA cleavage reaction”
Wednesday morning included invited talks in the “Mechanism-Driven Hazard Identification of Chemical Respiratory Allergens” session organized by Jessica Ponder (Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine). Jessica started off by describing the issue of identifying and testing potential chemical respiratory allergens that pose a significant human health risk in industries. Nora Krutz (Procter & Gamble) discussed the current in vitro models for testing respiratory sensitizers and the validation of new testing methods. Jean-Pierre Lepoittevin (U. de Strasbourg) detailed his laboratory’s approaches for detecting skin allergens using a reconstructed human epidermis and analysis using high-resolution magic angle spinning (HRMAS) nuclear magnetic resonance NMR and proteomics. Finally, Steve Enoch (Liverpool John Moores U) detailed the organic chemical reactivity constraints that factor into structural alerts for non-animal prediction of toxicological endpoints. After all speakers, were finished, Kristie Sullivan (Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine) chaired an open panel discussion on the topics of detecting, validating, testing, and differentiating skin and respiratory allergens. This panel discussion worked very well, and the Program Committee will look to incorporate more of these panels in future meetings.
Wednesday afternoon, the division held the final session of the meeting “Topics in Chemical Toxicology” organized by Sarah Shuck (City of Hope) and Daniel Tamae (Cal State U. Northridge). The excellent presentations in this session covered a range of topics, including a range of methods to detect and characterize toxicants and their metabolites in cells, repair of DNA adducts, cytotoxicity, and safety risks.
Engaging Early-Career TOXI Scientists
To encourage the participation of early-career TOXI scientists and to disseminate the TOXI program more widely, Dr. Sarah Shuck, along with Michael Trakselis, again recruited TOXI trainees to write up synapses and perspectives on Programmatic Sessions. These student authors were awarded ACS registration scholarships. Three ToxWatch articles and three letters to the Editor are being prepared for submission to Chemical Research in Toxicology, along with an editorial to be published in October. Keep an eye out for these articles to be published in the coming months! Thanks to Chemical Research in Toxicology for aiding us in this important initiative to provide networking opportunities, writing experiences, and publishing training for the next generation of TOXI scientists.
End of Meeting Survey
Many of you that attended this meeting may have gotten an email regarding this survey on the TOXI programming Feedback, but there are several questions that are amenable to the entire membership as we plan the next 2023 ACS meeting. I would be grateful if you would take some time to fill out this survey to help us plan for and improve upcoming TOXI programming.
Candidates for 2022 Elections
Chair Elect
Thomas Spratt is a Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey PA. Tom received a BA in Chemistry from the University of Rochester and a PhD in bioorganic chemistry from the University of Chicago. He did post-doctoral research with Heinz Floss at the Department of Chemistry at Ohio State studying mechanisms of DNA alkylation using chiral methyl alkylating agents. He went on to study with Steve Hecht at the American Health Foundation where he was introduced to tobacco carcinogenesis. His research at the American Health Foundation and Penn State has focused on mechanisms of DNA repair, fidelity of DNA polymerases and how carcinogen-induced mutations occur. Tom has been an active member of the Division of Chemical Toxicology, American Chemical Society since its inception, serving as a member of the Awards Committee (2009-2012), Secretary (2008-2011), Program Chair (2016-2019), and Chair of the Publicity/Communications Committee (2007-present). Tom has been an active member of joined TOXI at its inception. He organized two symposia for the Division, was Secretary of the Division for four years, Program Chair for three years, and has lead the TOXI Publicity Committee for the past 13 years. He has also served on the Advisory Board for Chemical Research in Toxicology (2004-2007, 2018-present).
Zucai Suo received a B.S. (chemistry) in 1986 and an M.S. (physical chemistry) in 1989 from Fudan University in Shanghai, China, and a Ph.D. (biological chemistry) in 1997 from Pennsylvania State University at University Park, Pennsylvania, under 
the direction of K. A. Johnson. He was Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund Postdoctoral Fellow under the guidance of Christopher T. Walsh at Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts. He then spent one and a half years as a senior biochemist at Eli Lilly & Company at Indianapolis, Indiana, and was part of the team that successfully developed an anti-hepatitis C protease inhibitor drug Telaprevir. After the short stay in industry, he moved to The Ohio State University at Columbus, Ohio, where he had been Assistant, Associate, and Full Professor in Chemistry and Biochemistry for a total of 17 years. Since 2018, he has been Eminent Professor and Dorian & John Blackmon Chair in Biomedical Science at Florida State University (FSU) College of Medicine, Tallahassee, Florida. He is currently establishing the Drug Discovery Institute at FSU. He has served as a regular and ad hoc member of both NIH and NSF study panels as well as other state and private funding agencies. In addition, he has been on the Editorial Advisory Boards of five scientific journals including Chemical Research in Toxicology and has served as a guest editor for Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. His research interests are in antiviral and anti-cancer drug discovery, drug delivery, and the mechanisms of action in DNA replication, DNA lesion bypass, DNA damage repair, gene editing, and protein degradation. He has published 120 research papers and won several research awards including the NSF Career Award in 2005, the OKeanos-CAPA Senior Investigator Award in 2017, and FSU College of Medicine Faculty Council Award for Outstanding Senior Faculty Researcher in 2020. In 2013, he was elected to be a fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science. For the TOXI Division, he has or had served as Secretary, Treasurer, and a member of the Program Committee, the Communication Committee, the Professional Development Committee, and the Executive Committee. He also co-chaired TOXI’s Strategic Planning Committee in 2021.
Member-at-large
James Galligan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Arizona. He graduated with a BS in Physiology from Michigan State University and a PhD in Pharmacology from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. His dissertation was focused on the intersection of the oxidative stress and ER stress responses in the alcoholic liver. As a graduate student, he was awarded an F31 predoctoral fellowship to support these studies. Following graduate school, he conducted his postdoctoral studies at Vanderbilt University in the laboratory of Dr. Lawrence Marnett. Here, he investigated the impact of histone adduction by electrophilic metabolic by-products and their role in mediating transcriptional responses to stress. His research led to the development of a highly sensitive mass spectrometry-based assay to profile protein post-translational modifications in any biological sample. At the conclusion of his postdoc in 2018, he began his independent lab at the University of Arizona in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology. As faculty, he has continued to pursue his interests in metabolism and epigenetics, identifying three novel post-translational modifications and their role in mediating homeostatic responses to stress. Currently, Jim is a member of the ACS Division of Chemical Toxicology and the Society of Toxicology. He is dedicated to mentoring the next generation of scientists, providing ample mentoring and networking opportunities for his trainees.
Dewakar Sangaraju is a principal scientist and head of non-clinical and clinical metabolomics team at Genentech’s small molecule bioanalysis group within Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics (DMPK) department. He completed his Bachelors and Masters in Pharmacy from Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS-Pilani), India and PhD in Medicinal Chemistry at University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. His PhD thesis dissertation was on using advanced mass spectrometric techniques for quantification of environmental carcinogen induced DNA adducts in humans as potential biomarkers of exposure and cancer risk.
After graduate school, Dr. Sangaraju did a brief ORISE fellowship in Division of Applied Regulatory Sciences (DARS), at USFDA, Silver Spring, MD aiding in bioanalytical research at FDA before joining Genentech as Associate Scientist within DMPK department supporting small molecule bioanalysis in drug research, discovery and development. During his PhD in Tretyakova lab at University of Minnesota, Dr. Sangaraju performed research on studying chemical carcinogenesis of environmental and cigarette smoke carcinogen 1,3-butadiene in humans. He developed advanced and ultra-sensitive capillary and nanospray LC coupled with high resolution mass spectrometry bioanalytical methods for translation of 1,3-butadiene induced DNA adducts as biomarkers of its exposure in animal studies into humans clinical studies assessing 1,3-butadiene exposure risk. By the end of graduate school, he became an expert in utilizing advanced mass spectrometry
for quantitative analysis of biomarkers and his PhD research was published extensively and even highlighted as journal cover in Chemical Research in Toxicology journal (October 2013 edition)
At Genentech, Dr. Sangaraju is utilizing his bioanalytical mass spectrometry expertise in metabolomics to study the effect of disease and drug on human endogenous metabolic pathways. He is applying bioanalytical mass spectrometry to understand drug metabolism, pharmacokinetics, drug toxicology aiding in biomarker discovery & development. As a metabolomics team lead at Genentech, his team is responsible for utilizing LC-MS based metabolomics to study basic endogenous metabolism related chemical biology in the disease areas such as oncology, neurodegeneration and immunology. His team applies global and targeted metabolomics to study drug pharmacokinetics- pharmacodynamic (PK-PD) relationships, drug PK- toxicokinetic (PK-TK) assessments aiding in biomarkers research, discovery and development to evaluate and understand drug efficacy and toxicity. Dr. Sangaraju’s collaborated and contributed to various research teams at Genentech and some of his research work was published in the areas such as aging research, cancer metabolism, immunology and toxicology. At Genentech, Dr. Sangaraju mentors his team and collaborates with teams across Genentech ranging from early research to late-stage drug development and therapeutic antibody manufacturing. Dr.Sangaraju is keen about engaging and learning by contributing scientifically and professionally within Chem Tox division given the opportunity.
Member of the Nominations Committee
Michael Trakselis is a Professor of Biochemistry at Baylor University. He received B.S. degrees in Psychology (1995) and then in Chemistry (1996) from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He then spent two years at Abbott Laboratories in QC/Method Development before attending Penn State University for his PhD (2002), working with Stephen Benkovic on the in vitro characterization of the bacteriophage T4 replisome proteins. Afterwards, he was a Royal Society Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Cambridge and the Hutchison MRC Cancer Cell Unit with Ronald A. Laskey and Stephen D. Bell on the biochemical and cellular function of hexameric helicases in archaea and human cells. In 2006, he started his independent career at the University of Pittsburgh, before moving his laboratory to Baylor University in 2014. He currently serves as the Director of Graduate Affairs for the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.
Professor Trakselis’ work is focused on uncovering molecular and enzymological mechanisms involved in DNA replication and repair. His research spans all three domains of life, and he strives to reveal evolutionary similarities and differences in the enzymatic abilities of analogous protein complexes. His overarching research goals are to provide fundamental molecular descriptions of the precise protein-protein and protein-DNA contacts required for dynamic but efficient DNA replication, lesion bypass, and DNA repair. His expertise lies in a number of overlapping disciplines including molecular biology, biochemical and biophysical analysis of enzymes, molecular genetics, and cellular biology.
He has been a member of the Division of Chemical Toxicology since 2006 and has recently served as National Meeting Program Chair (2022-2023) where he has been responsible for adding virtual Spring TOXI meetings in 2020-2023 and introducing writing and mentoring opportunities for younger scientists, through a collaboration with ACS Chemical Research in Toxicology Journal.
Yinsheng Wang received his Ph. D. degree from Washington University in St. Louis after obtaining his BS and MS degrees from Shandong University and Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, respectively. He is currently a distinguished professor and Donald T. Sawyer Endowed Founder’s Chair in Chemistry at the University of California Riverside. Yinsheng’s research involves the use of mass spectrometry, along with synthetic organic chemistry and molecular biology, for investigation about the occurrence and biological consequences of DNA damage as well as for the identification and functional characterizations of nucleic acid- and nucleotide-binding proteins. Yinsheng has trained or in the process of training of over 80 Ph. D. students and post-doctoral fellows, and he has co-authored over 340 research articles. Yinsheng was named as a fellow for the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences in 2012, and he was the recipient for the inaugural Chemical Research in Toxicology Young Investigator Award from the Division of Chemical Toxicology of the American Chemical Society (2012), the 2013 Biemann Medal from the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, the 2018 EAS Award for Outstanding Achievements in Mass Spectrometry, and the 2020 RIVER award from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
Councilor/Alternate Councilor
Sarah Shuck is an Assistant Professor in the department of Diabetes and Cancer Metabolism in the Beckman Research Institute at City of Hope. She received her Ph.D. from Indiana University and was a Ruth Kirschstein NIH postdoctoral fellow at Vanderbilt University with Dr. Larry Marnett. Dr. Shuck has been an active ACS member for over a decade and has been enthusiastically involved with the Chem Tox division throughout this time. She currently serves as a councilor and program chair elect and has worked to organize numerous symposia and the full national program. To support the travel of students and postdocs to the National Meeting, she contributed to the preparation and submission of several successfully funded NIEHS R13 grants. She also received an ACS Project Grant on behalf of the division to establish a mentoring program focused on diversity and inclusion. Sarah is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for Chemical Research in Toxicology and has reviewed numerous manuscripts for this journal. She recently initiated a Perspectives series inviting mentees of the leaders of Chemical Toxicology to submit a tribute to their mentor along with a review article focused on their research interests. She also served as a guest editor for the 35th Chemical Research in Toxicology special issue honoring Dr. Larry Marnett. Dr. Shuck is an expert in analytical chemistry and has developed a multiplexed mass spectrometry method to measure analytes for prediction and early diagnosis of cancer, diabetes, and diabetic complications. In addition to biomarker development, she is also focused on establishing the role of electrophile stress on driving disease.
Ujjal Sarkar is a resident of Belmont, Massachusetts. He is currently a DMPK project representative and leading a translational Drug Biotransformation function towards bringing innovative therapeutic interventions for a broad range of neuroscience diseases at Cerevel Therapeutics in Cambridge. He is also an elected Councilor of American of Chemical Society (ACS) representing Division of Chemical Toxicology (TOXI). He earned a B.Sc. (Hons.) degree in Chemistry from Presidency College, and a M.Sc. in Bio-organic and medicinal chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology (I.I.T) Kharagpur. He then moved to the US to pursue a Ph.D. in the areas of anticancer drug design, drug metabolism and mechanism of drug action at the University of Missouri-Columbia with Prof. Kent S. Gates. He then accepted a postdoctoral associate offer from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T), was promoted to a Drug Metabolism Research Scientist, and worked with Professor Steven R. Tannenbaum in the department of Biological Engineering. Dr. Sarkar cross-collaborated with scientists, engineers, and US government officials to develop the first multi-human-microphysiological including endometrium organ system, funded by the US Defense of Project Agency. Dr. Sarkar then took the transition to a biopharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca, towards driving innovative Oncology drug discovery and development programs. He was awarded Global Oncology Innovation and Achievement Award in 2018.
Dr. Sarkar has been an active member in the TOXI over 16+ years and has served on several program committees including Program Development Committee and Communication Committee. He had chaired and organized the Young Investigator Oral Symposiums in for several years. He has contributed to several research papers including J. Med. Chem. Drug. Metab. Disposition. Chem. Res. Toxicol, JACS, Pharmacometrics & Systems Pharmacology, Nature Scientific Reports, J. Org. Chem and PloS one. He has been a peer and adjudicative reviewer of 10+ journals including from the Royal Society of Chemistry, Elsevier, and the American Chemical Society, and had been on two editorial boards. In 2014, he became a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemists. He has been a member of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), American Chemical Society (ACS), International Society for the Study of Xenobiotics (ISSX). He is a Biotransformation Organizing Committee member of Applied Pharmaceutical Analysis-Boston Society India chapter. He co-led and co-inaugurated ACS-TOXI-India Chapter with the TOXI division chair and program chair Drs. Natalia Tretyakova and Michael Trakselis, and successfully has received two Innovative Project Grants toward bringing partners from industry and government to forge US-India collaboration in chemical toxicology, water, food, drug safety, and related topics. Dr. Sarkar is actively engaged with Division of Chem Tox. over a decade, and he is continuously bringing new ideas and perspectives to the TOXI programs and visions.