Eric S. Dawson , Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
B.S. Chemistry, The University of Alabama, 1994
Ph.D. Pharmacology, Vanderbilt University, 2001
Biosketch and Research Interests
The Vanderbilt Specialized Chemistry Center for Accelerated Probe Development serves to expedite the discovery and development of high quality probe compounds for the MLPCN network in line with its mission to significantly impact diverse biological fields with novel chemical entities. The Informatics Core for the Vanderbilt Specialized Chemistry Center partners with medicinal chemists on each probe project to support and optimize synthetic efforts by leveraging techniques and tools from cheminformatics and molecular modeling. Opportunities have arisen to go beyond basic chemical similarity searches and to incorporate protein modeling, structure-based design and ligand docking into the design of successful probes. My research background is strongly interdisciplinary with a PhD in Pharmacology from Vanderbilt University, postdoctoral experience in computational biology with Terry Lybrand (Vanderbilt Center for Structural Biology) and computational project development experience as a research faculty member in Biochemistry (2004-2009). I previously served as the Assistant Director for the MLPCN Informatics Core (2008-2009) and recently was named the Director. I have successfully established support for medicinal chemistry efforts leveraging state-of-the art algorithms from commercially available software to provide tools and training for medicinal chemists engaged in MLPCN network probe production projects. The continuation of our work will provide additional opportunities for generation of additional best-in-class optimized probe compounds.
Selected Publications
Aldrich LN, Dawson ES, and Lindsley CW (2010) Evaluation of the Biosynthetic Proposal for the Synthesis of Marineosins A and B. Organic Letters 12(5): 1048-1051.
Lebois EP, Bridges TM, Lewis LM, Dawson ES, Kane AS, Xiang Z, Jadhav SB, Yin, JH, Kennedy P, Meiler J, Niswender CM, Jones CK, Conn PJ, Weaver CD, and Lindsley CW (2010) Discovery and Characterization of Novel Subtype-Selective Allosteric Agonists for the Investigation of M1 Receptor Function in the Central Nervous System. ACS Chemical Neuroscience 1: 104-121.
Mueller R, Rodriguez A, Dawson ES, Butkiewicz M, Oleszkiewicz S, Bleckmann A, Nuygen T, Weaver, CD, Lindsley CW, Conn PJ and Meiler J (2010) Identification of novel drug-like compounds that potentiate activity of metabotropic glutamate receptor subtype 5 using a machine learning based virtual High-Throughput Screen. ACS Chemical Neuroscience 1: 288-305.
Dawson ES and Wells JN (2001) Determination of Amino Acid Residues that are Accessible from the Ligand Binding Crevice in the Seventh Transmembrane-Spanning Region of the Human A1 Adenosine Receptor. Molecular Pharmacology 59(5):1187-1195.
5. Dawson ES, Henne, RM, Miller, LJ and Lybrand TP (2002) Molecular Models for Cholecystokinin-A Receptor. Pharmacology & Toxicology 91: 290-296 (review).
Harikumar HG, Pinion DI, Wessels WS, Dawson ES, Lybrand TP, Prendergast FG, and Miller LJ (2004) Measurement of Intermolecular Distances for the Natural Agonist Peptide Docked at the Cholecystokinin Receptor Expressed in situ Using Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer. Molecular Pharmacology 65:28-35. (http://molpharm.aspetjournals.org/cgi/content/full/65/1/28)
Hadac EM, Dawson ES, Darrow JW, Sugg EE, Lybrand TP, and Miller LJ (2006) Novel Benzodiazepine Photoaffinity Probe Stereoselectively Labels a Site Deep within the Membrane-Spanning Domain of the Cholecystokinin Receptor. Journal of Medicinal Chemistry 49:850-863. (PMCID: PMC2528300)
Codreanu SG, Adams DG, Dawson ES, Wadzinski BE, and Liebler DC (2006) Inhibition of Protein Phosphatase 2A Activity by Selective Electrophile Alkylation Damage. Biochemistry 45:10020-10029.
Rigsby R.E., Brown D.W., Dawson E.S., Lybrand T.P., and Armstrong R.N. (2007) A model for glutathione binding and activation in the fosfomycin resistance protein, FosA. Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics 464:277–283.
Hanson S.M., Dawson E.S., Francis D.J., Van Eps N., Klug C.S., Hubbell W.L., Meiler J. and Gurevich V.V. (2008) A model for the solution structure of the rod arrestin tetramer. Structure 16:924-934. (PMCID: PMC2464289)
Kaufmann K., Dawson E.S., Henry L.K., Field J.R., Blakely R.D. and Meiler J. (2008) Structural Determinants of human and Drosophila Serotonin Transporter Species Selective Substrate Recognition Revealed Through Docking Studies. Proteins: Structure, Function, and Bioinformatics 74, 630-642.
Lamb D.C., Lei L., Zhao B., Yuan H., Jackson C.J., Warrilow A.G.S., Skaug T., Dyson P.J., Dawson E.S., Kelly S.L., Hachey D.L. and Waterman M.R. (2010) Streptomyces coelicolor A3(2) CYP102 Protein, a Novel Fatty Acid Hydroxylase Encoded as a Heme Domain without an N-Terminal Redox Partner. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 76(6): 1975-1980.
