ACS Honors NIDDK’s Jacobson
Dr. Kenneth A. Jacobson, chief of NIDDK’s Laboratory of Bioorganic Chemistry, received the American Chemical Society’s Bristol-Myers Squibb Smissman Award during its 253rd national meeting in San Francisco recently.
The award is given to a living scientist whose research, teaching or service has had a substantial impact on the intellectual and theoretical development of the field of medicinal chemistry.
Jacobson’s research focuses on the relationship between drug structures and biological activity, specifically to develop drugs that act as agonists or antagonists of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). The study of GPCRs, including purinergic receptors, provides promising avenues for the development of new drug therapy for treating chronic diseases. More than 35 compounds from the Jacobson lab are available commercially as research tools and are used to advance research in hundreds of laboratories.