Tony Fehr receives a 2022 J.R. and Inez Jay Fund research award

Tony Fehr (assistant professor) received a 2022 J.R. and Inez Jay Fund research award to conduct a project titled “Discovery and Optimization of SARS-CoV-2 Mac1 Inhibitors.” He will collaborate with four other researchers on the project:

• Dana Ferraris, chair and associate professor of chemistry at McDaniel College in Westminster, Maryland.
• Anu Roy, director of KU’s High Throughput Screening Laboratory and the CoBRE Infectious Disease Assay Development Core Laboratory.
• Michael Hageman, Valentino J. Stella Distinguished Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and director of KU’s Biopharmaceutical Innovation & Optimization Center.
• David K. Johnson, director of KU’s Computational Chemical Biology Core Laboratory.

The project aims to discover and optimize inhibitors that impede coronavirus replication. The research may have a positive impact on global efforts to identify compounds and therapies to fight coronaviruses.