1. Bill Gerwick Research Interests Characterizing the ‘weird and wonderful’ natural products of marine algae and cyanobacteria Drug discovery from marine organisms in diverse therapeutic areas; parasitic diseases, cancer, neurosciences, inflammation Developing a mechanistic and genetic understanding of the biosynthesis of marine cyanobacterial natural products Developing marine microalgae as a source of sustainable biofuels Development of new methodologies in mass spectrometry and NMR spectroscopy as applied to natural products Carmaphycin B, a low nM proteasome inhibitor

2. Bill Gerwick Core Expertise Scuba diving/collecting in tropical reef environments Isolation and structural characterization of bioactive organic molecules Genome sequencing and bioinformatics of cyanobacteria for their natural product pathways Development of new methods in NMR and mass spectrometry applied to small molecule structural analysis Biological assays of small molecules (cancer cells, inflammation (NO), molluscicidal, neurotoxicity) Synthesis of natural products and analogs

3. Proposed Collaborations with SSPPS Faculty Medicinal chemical exploration of some of our most promising marine natural product drug leads Analytical chemical support to clinical pharmacy projects (e.g. new drug metabolites, other bioactive compounds) Drug discovery using innovative biological assays and our rich compound/fraction/extract collection (around 850 pure and structurally defined compounds, more than 3,000 fractions representing >30,000 compounds) Development of new analytical methods involving NMR and MS platforms