Research Focus & Activities
Dr. Wayne Childers is a medicinal chemist whose experience encompasses small molecules, peptides, molecular glues and protein degraders. He is currently a Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at Temple University School of Pharmacy and Associate Director of the Moulder Center for Drug Discovery Research, an academic drug discovery center founded in 2010.
Intellectual property generated in his labs has been licensed to three companies for development and is a co-founder of one of those companies. He is an author on over 50 peer-reviewed research publications as well as several reviews, perspectives, and book chapters; he is also an inventor on over 60 patents and patent applications. Dr. Childers is additionally a co-editor of the Wiley book series Successful Drug Discovery as well as the upcoming Wiley book series Trends in Drug Discovery. He further serves as a scientific advisor for a number of companies, including Rapafusyn Pharmaceuticals, NatPro Pharmaceuticals and Recombination Therapeutics.
Collaboration Opportunities:
Dr. Childers is interested in collaborations involving structure-and ligand-based drug design in a variety of therapeutic areas, including cancer, diseases of the CNS, metabolic disorders, and microbial infection.
Key Interests: small molecules, drug discovery, cancer, CNS, metabolic disorders, microbial infections
Select Publications
- Chandramouly G, Fried W, Gordon J, Ralph D, Keuk C, Kumari S, Ramanjulu M, Auerbacher W, Minakhin L, Tredinnick T, Tiberi B, Morton G, Betsch R, Cai KQ, Vekariya UM, Tyagi M, Skorski T, Karakashev S, Johnson N, Childers WE, Chen XS, Pomerantz RT. RTx-303, an Orally Bioavailable Polθ Polymerase Inhibitor That Potentiates PARP Inhibitors in BRCA Mutant Tumors. J Med Chem. 2025 Nov 13;68(21):22196-22215.
- Zhang X, Jeong H, Niu J, Holland SM, Rotanz BN, Gordon J, Einarson MB, Childers WE, Thomas GM. Inhibiting acute, axonal DLK palmitoylation is neuroprotective and avoids deleterious effects of cell-wide DLK inhibition. Nat Commun. 2025 Apr 3;16(1):3031.
- Alasmari MS, Alasmari F, Alsharari SD, Alasmari AF, Ali N, Ahamad SR, Alghamdi AM, Kadi AA, Hammad AM, Ali YSM, Childers WE, Abou-Gharbia M, Sari Y. Neuroinflammation and Neurometabolomic Profiling in Fentanyl Overdose Mouse Model Treated with Novel β-Lactam, MC-100093, and Ceftriaxone. Toxics. 2024 Aug 19;12(8):604.
- León BE, Peyton L, Essa H, Wieden T, Marion N, Childers WE, Abou-Gharbia M, Choi DS. A novel monobactam lacking antimicrobial activity, MC-100093, reduces sex-specific ethanol preference and depressive-like behaviors in mice. Neuropharmacology. 2023 Jul 1;232:109515.