- Co-Director (Med Chem): Chad Bennett, PhD
- Co-Director (HTS): Blake Peterson, PhD
- Technical Director (HTS): Meng Wu, PhD
- Technical Director (Med Chem): Sandip Vibhute, PhD
- Medicinal Chemist: Tyler Wilson, PhD
- Research Specialist: Zhihong Lin, PhD
- Researcher 1: Huali Dong, MD
- Post Doctoral Scholar: Jogendra Pawar, PhD
Chad Bennett, PhD, DDSR Co-Director, was recruited to The Ohio State University in 2014. He additionally serves as Senior Director of Chemistry for the OSUCCC’s Drug Development Institute (DDI). He is a highly skilled organic chemist and accomplished pharmaceutical professional over 20 years of drug discovery and development experience at Schering-Plough, Merck, and OSUCCC. He has expertise in hit identification, lead optimization, candidate selection, GMP manufacturing, and IND-enabling studies to support phase I clinical trials. Dr. Bennett conducted his doctoral work in synthetic organic chemistry at Indiana University, followed by NCI-funded postdoctoral fellowships at Stanford University and Ohio State. His academic work was followed by medicinal and process chemistry research at Schering-Plough, Merck and PTC Therapeutics, where he gained a broad base of drug discovery and development experience.
Blake Peterson, PhD, Co-Director, is a Professor and Chair of the Division of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy at Ohio State and Co-Leads the Translational Therapeutics Program of the OSUCCC. He has over 25 years of experience in medicinal chemistry and chemical biology that emphasizes molecular design, chemical synthesis, target-based and phenotypic screening, and biological evaluation of anticancer agents and molecular probes of cancer biology. He provides overall scientific direction and oversees the HTS core.
Meng Wu, PhD, Technical Director of the DDSR High Throughput Screening (HTS), previously served as director of the University of Iowa High-Throughput Screening (UIHTS) Core. His research expertise focuses on biochemical and cellular in vitro assay adaption and development for plate-based screening, high-throughput screening, high-content screening and systems cancer biology/pharmacology for early drug discovery, target identification and molecular probe development. His research interests are on developing plate-based high-throughput/content technologies, especially for membrane targets such as ion channels, GPCRs and transporters.
Sandip Vibhute, PhD, Technical Director, is a synthetic and medicinal chemist with more than 19 years of experience working as a senior member of teams consisting of computational chemists, biochemists and molecular biologists in both academic and industrial settings. Dr. Vibhute obtained his PhD in Organic Chemistry from Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany. Prior to joining the DDSR, Dr. Vibhute has been successful at multiple academic institutions and contract research organizations, bringing with him a breadth of knowledge from a variety of drug discovery projects.
Tyler Wilson, PhD, Medicinal Chemist, is a synthetic medicinal chemist, experienced in academic drug discovery. Dr. Wilson earned his PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the Ohio State University’s College of Pharmacy in 2019. During his doctoral work he collaborated with multiple academic groups to develop and test anticancer natural product analogs and small-molecule HIV Integrase inhibitors, gaining critical knowledge of the drug discovery process.