People of ASP

Jim McChesney received a B.S. (Iowa State University), and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Indiana University. He became Prof. of Botany and Medicinal Chemistry at Univ. Kansas (1975), and moved to Univ. Mississippi (1977), chairing the Dept. of Pharmacognosy (1978-1986), and teaching in Brazil as a Fulbright Fellow (1985). While Director of the Research Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (1986-1995), he conceived and implemented the establishment of the National Center for Natural Products Research (1989), and was named F.A.P. Barnard Distinguished Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences (1993). In 1996 he became V.P. R&D at NaPro Biotherapeutics, renamed Tapestry Pharmaceuticals (2003) with the sale of its development group to ChromaDex, Boulder, CO. He became CSO of the latter group while remaining CSO at Tapestry. His research interests include the chemistry, metabolism, function and production of bioactive natural products, chemotherapy of tropical diseases, and the control of plant growth and development. His current focus is development of cancer chemo-therapeutics. His achievements include: development of Ironstone Separations, a new technology for the separation and purification of natural product drug candidates; a strategy for economical production of paclitaxel from cultivated Taxus biomass; design of pharmaceutically improved taxanes, including, TPI 287, currently in Phase II clinical trials; discovery of a new 8-aminoquinoline analog, NPC 1161, having lower toxicity and broad anti-parasitic activity, and expected to enter clinical trials. An advisor to the WHO and UNESCO, and an elected Fellow of the AAAS (1995), he has received numerous awards and over $40 million funding (NIH, NSF, FDA, USDA, WHO), and has authored nearly 200 publications and over 40 patents. (JDM)