Dr. Terry Moore is an Assistant Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Pharmacy. His research program focuses on making and studying new compounds that target an important, yet understudied, group of drug targets: transcription factors, which are proteins that recognize specific DNA sequences and regulate gene expression.
Although the compounds they make are not drugs in and of themselves, they could pave the way for new therapeutics to treat cancer and other diseases. Much of the work in Dr. Moore’s lab focuses on two transcription factors, the estrogen receptor and Nrf2. Estrogen receptor is a transcription factor that becomes over-expressed in some breast cancers.
New ways of therapeutically targeting estrogen receptor are needed in estrogen receptor-positive breast cancers. By providing molecular probes to study estrogen receptor, his project provides a foundation for new therapeutic opportunities to block estrogen signaling in estrogen receptor-positive breast cancers.
His research is focused on transcription factors and gene expression, as well as, the development of small molecules and peptides to inhibit protein-protein interactions