{"id":31,"date":"2020-10-14T15:15:22","date_gmt":"2020-10-14T22:15:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/?page_id=31"},"modified":"2026-03-22T14:20:58","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T22:20:58","slug":"research-interests","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/research-interests\/","title":{"rendered":"Research Interests"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-257 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/10\/ActiveSite3-e1603156184168.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"900\" height=\"472\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/10\/ActiveSite3-e1603156184168.png 900w, https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/10\/ActiveSite3-e1603156184168-300x157.png 300w, https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/10\/ActiveSite3-e1603156184168-768x403.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: right;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>Return to Main Page<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/10\/Research.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-35\" src=\"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/10\/Research.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"971\" height=\"599\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/10\/Research.jpg 1440w, https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/10\/Research-300x185.jpg 300w, https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/10\/Research-1024x631.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/10\/Research-768x474.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 971px) 100vw, 971px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The overarching area of our research is drug discovery and development by using natural product compounds and enzymes. Our research lies at the interface of chemistry and biology and lab members get hands-on experience on different equipment including HPLC, NMR, HR-MS, FPLC, microplate readers, thermocyclers, and incubators. There are two main active projects in our lab:<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">I-Drug Discovery; Microbial Natural Products as Drug-Leads<\/span><\/strong><\/span>. Soil bacteria have provided <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/10\/germ-28874_1280.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-302 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/10\/germ-28874_1280.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"170\" height=\"167\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/10\/germ-28874_1280.png 1280w, https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/10\/germ-28874_1280-300x295.png 300w, https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/10\/germ-28874_1280-1024x1007.png 1024w, https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/10\/germ-28874_1280-768x755.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 170px) 100vw, 170px\" \/><\/a>many pharmacologically useful compounds including antibiotics such as tetracycline, erythromycin, kanamycin, neomycin and vancomycin; antiparasites such as avermectins; immunosuppressants such as rapamycin; antifungals such as amphotericin B; and anticancer drugs such as doxorubicin. We process soil samples collected from unexplored environments to cultivate bacteria that synthesize bioactive natural products. Members in this project merge multiple disciplines such as natural products chemistry, microbiology and biological screening.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline; color: #0000ff;\"><strong>II-Drug Development; Drug Modification Using Biocatalysts.<\/strong><\/span> Enzymes are nature&#8217;s catalysts to catalyze chemical reactions. We utilize this reaction to perform difficult-to-achieve chemical reactions. Enzymes are overproduced in heterologous hosts, purified and in some cases engineered to enhance drugs activities and properties. Members in this project merge multiple disciplines such as enzyme purification, protein engineering, biochemistry, medicinal chemistry and biological screening.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline; color: #0000ff;\"><strong>III-Virtual Docking and Screening of Disease Targets<\/strong><strong>.<\/strong><\/span> Virtual screening is becoming popular in drug discovery and used to narrow down the number of compounds that should be experimentally tested. Our lab uses computational tools to predict potential activity of natural products. Members in this project merge computational and biological screening.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/10\/bacteria-163711.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-303\" src=\"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/10\/bacteria-163711.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/10\/bacteria-163711.jpg 1920w, https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/10\/bacteria-163711-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/10\/bacteria-163711-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/10\/bacteria-163711-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/10\/bacteria-163711-1536x864.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: right;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>Return to Main Page<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Return to Main Page The overarching area of our research is drug discovery and development by using natural product compounds and enzymes. Our research lies at the interface of chemistry and biology and lab members get hands-on experience on different equipment including HPLC, NMR, HR-MS, FPLC, microplate readers, thermocyclers, and incubators. There are two main&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/research-interests\/\">Continue Reading Research Interests<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.chapman.edu\/elshahawilab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}