Just before Christmas former Chemical Biology grad student Alaina Richard visited the lab to tell us all about her experiences teaching at Vassar College this last semester. Dr. Richard was also finally able to pick up a long-overdue bottle of champaign to celebrate a paper that was published after she left the lab. We love it when lab alumni stop by to visit!

Medicinal Chemistry graduate student Sarah Burris-Hiday defended her dissertation last summer but participated in commencement at the end of the winter semester. Sarah was selected to carry the College of Pharmacy flag at commencement and was part of the platform party. Sarah's family and friends (and Dean Ellingrood, left) cheered this recognition of all her diligent research.

The Scott lab gathered to make and decorate holiday cookies--in part to thank the College of Pharmacy staff and administration who support our research all year long. We also celebrated the birthday of Dr. Phil Cox who did a sabbatical with the Scott Lab this fall.

This fall everyone came over to the Scott house to pick LOTS of apples from the apple trees. There for a while our lab conference room and homes and the College of Pharmacy lobby were all full of apples from our bumper crop.  Afterwards we carved pumpkins and watched a scary movie.  Even Miss Eloise jumped in a pumpkin!

Biological Chemistry graduate student Alexi Chabez attended the highly inspiring 2023 SACNAS NDISTEM Conference in Portland, Oregon. Alexi is also a mentor in the SACNAS Pathway to Graduate School Program.

Biological Chemistry graduate student Alexi Chabez won a Rackham Graduate Student Research Grant to defray costs of conducting clearly defined research projects.  In this case the award supports laboratory supplies needed to purify and characterize CYP7B1 and its mutants.  This important enzyme in human bile acid production associated with spastic paraplegia type 5.  Nice job Alexi!

Recent Ph.D. and Medicinal Chemistry student Jinghan Liu has accepted a position as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Andrew Kruse lab in the Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School.  Congratulations Jinghan and hope your move to Boston goes smoothly.  We'll miss you and Uni and Charles!

Pharmacology graduate student Ellie Frydendall's poster on an HTS version of a spectroscopic ligand binding assay for P450 enzymes was selected as a finalist in the Predoctoral Award Competition at the International Society for the Study of Xenobiotics North American Meeting.  Ellie presented her poster at the meeting in Boston, and gave an amazing flash talk.  Nice job Ellie!

Biological Chemistry graduate student Alexi Chabez and her peers Dana Beseiso and Kira Holton put together the award-winning design for this year's Biological Chemistry Departmental retreat.  This retreat was held at the Maumee Bay Lodge & Conference Center.

Collaborator Mengqi (Maggie) Chai from Michael Gross's lab at the University of Washington St. Louis presented collaborative work on CYP2A6 in the presence and absence of its reductase FMN domain. This talk occurred at the Symposium on the Practical Applications of Mass Spectrometry in the Biotechnology Industry.

The Scott lab welcomes Biophysics first year student Autumn Pilarski (left) and PIBS first year student Kierra Pendill (middle) for fall semester rotations. We also welcome Associate Professor Phil Cox (right) from Asuza Pacific University for a sabbatical learning how to express and purify human cytochrome P450 enzymes.

The lab said goodbye to Jinghan (and Charles and Uni) before their big move to Boston. We ate the lab-favorite Joe's pizza, and made s'mores around the campfire, followed by an outdoor movie--Disney's "Soul".

Medicinal Chemistry graduate student Sarah Burris-Hiday successfully defended her dissertation research and has been awarded her Ph.D. Following an exemplary seminar, family and friends celebrated our newest Dr. in style. Congratulations Sarah! You rocked!

Medicinal Chemistry graduate student Jinghan Liu gave a stellar defense describing her structural and functional work with both CYP8B1 and CYP3A7. A unanimous thumbs-up from her committee means that Jinghan Liu is now Jinghan Liu, Ph.D. Celebrations ensued with the traditional champaign toast, chocolate fondue, and cake. Congratulations are in order for Dr. Liu who will soon be starting a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical.

Graduate student Jinghan Liu will be presenting her newest CYP3A7 structure containing four molecules of its substrate at the 2023 Drug Metabolism Gordon Research Conference and the accompanying Gordon Research Seminar. Exciting work, also recently published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Chemical Biology graduate student Alaina Richard successfully defended her dissertation July 7, 2023. A lab celebration followed with appropriately themed P450 crystallography/NMR cake, champaign, and a Vassar College Visiting Assistant Professor Starter Kit, including an Einstein begonia.

The Scott Lab took our Jimmy John's to the Arb for a picnic and stroll through the Peony Garden, finally catching it in full bloom after missing it the last couple of years. Summer days in Michigan are wonderful!

After 8.5 months of coming to lab every day with her Mom, little Eloise Loomis is now available for oohs and aahs! Isn't she cute?

Graduate student Sarah Burris and collaborator Mengqi (Maggie) Chai attended and presented their work at the recent ASPET meeting in St. Louis. Their poster won a second place poster award! Nice job Sarah and Maggie!

The Scott lab greatly enjoyed the Great Lakes Drug Metabolism Discussion Group meeting again this year. Held at the Michigan Union in Ann Arbor the meeting included both great science (CYP3A4/5! MBI! Nimatrelvir!) and good friends. Here we are at the conference dinner, joined by members of the Brixius-Anderko and Auchus labs.

The Scott lab has three awesome students graduating this year and Alaina is the first. In her search for positions with a strong teaching emphasis she recently received two offers, a teaching postdoc position from the UM NIH-funded Institutional Research and Academic Career Development (IRACDA) program and a visiting assistant professor position with Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY. Looks like Alaina will go from being a UM Wolverine to a Vassar Brewer late this summer!

Biological Chemistry graduate student Cara Loomis recently gave her departmental seminar talking about her recent pre-steady-state kinetic work with cytochrome P450 11B enzymes. Great job Cara!

Pharmacology student Ellie Frydendall has accepted an internship at Pfizer this summer. She will be primarily working with the Structure and Molecular Science Group to characterize the structure-function relationship of drug metabolizing enzymes. She will have the opportunity to explore both structural biology and enzymology techniques complementary to those used in her thesis research and learn how to connect basic research to drug development programs in industry.

Mathematics is the language that allows us to describe both the molecular structure and the biochemistry of human cytochrome P450 enzymes. The Scott lab celebrated pi day this year with pecan pie, lemon meringue pie, and berry pie.

Biological Chemistry graduate student Cara Loomis was invited by Assistant Professor Erin Taylor to share her research with undergraduate students in the Biochemistry Program at Carroll University . Cara's talk was titled "Redox Partner Adrenodoxin Allosterically Alters the Function of the Human Steroidogenic Cytochrome P450 11B Enzymes". It's always fun to share the our research discoveries and Cara does a great job with that.

Pharm.D. student Lily Kim has been accepted into the Medicinal Chemistry Ph.D. program at the University of Michigan. Lily is a current UM Pharm.D. student who has been doing P450 ligand binding assays and enzymatic assays under the guidance of Med Chem graduate student Sarah Burris-Hiday for the last year. Exciting to see that Lily will have a lot more research experience in her future! Congratulations Lily!

Medicinal Chemistry graduate student Jinghan Liu has been selected by Rackham Graduate School as a Barbour Scholar. Originally endowed by Levi Barbour in 1917 to support female graduate students from Asia and the Middle East, this award recognizes Jinghan's exemplary research contributions to the structure and function of human (membrane) cytochrome P450 enzymes. Her recent work includes the first structures of the bile-acid producing cytochrome P450 8B1. Read more about Jinghan's work here.

Medicinal Chemistry graduate student Sarah Burris-Hiday was awarded a travel award from ASPET to attend the 2023 annual meeting to be held in St. Louis Union Station May 18-21. Come see Sarah's poster with collaborators Mengqi Chai and Michael L. Gross from Washington University and visit with other members of the Scott lab attending the meeting at Union Station.

Scott lab postdoctoral fellow Nicole Motl is moving to the UM Center for Structural Biology where she will use her crystallographic skills to help a broad array of clients reach their scientific goals. We'll miss Nicole, her cookies, and her flair for decorating and crafts, so it was only appropriate to mark her departure with a lab paint-and-pour event. Isn't our artwork fun?

Our very own Sarah Burris-Hiday has been awarded a Graduate Student Grant from the UM Rackham Graduate School. This $3000 award supports her as she is wrapping up her dissertation research on the interactions of human cytochrome P450 enzymes and NADPH-cytochrome P450 reductase. Nicely done, Sarah!