Corey R Hopkins, Ph.D.

Official Affiliation: Pharmacology

Profile

Dr. Corey Hopkins is an experienced and highly trained medicinal chemist who has extensive experience in all aspects of medicinal chemistry (hit-to-lead, lead identification, lead optimization, SAR, ADME, pre-IND studies). Dr. Hopkins has been involved in small molecule drug discovery in both industry and academia for more than a decade. During his graduate work, he worked on the total synthesis of complex natural products, synthetic methodology development, and pharmacophore profiling for Cdc25 phosphatase inhibitors. As a medicinal chemist with Sanofi Pharmaceuticals he was a key contributor on a number of projects within the CNS, skeletal and inflammatory related therapeutic targets, such as multiple sclerosis, depression, rheumatoid arthritis and osteoporosis; culminating in several projects advancing into development status. Dr. Hopkins is currently the Associate Director of Medicinal Chemistry for the Vanderbilt Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery, the Co-Director, Vanderbilt Specialized Chemistry Center for Accelerate Probe Development and an Assistant Professor of Pharmacology and Chemistry. He is currently the chemistry team leader for the development of novel mGlu4 positive allosteric modulators for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease through a grant from the Michael J. Fox Foundation. In this capacity, Dr. Hopkins is responsible for all aspects of the chemistry effort (design of novel scaffolds, coordination in vitro/in vivo pharmacokinetic studies, in vivo biology studies). This program has now advanced to pre-IND studies for clinical candidate advancement with several compounds exhibiting significant effects in pre-clinical rodent models of PD along with promising pre-clinical toxicology studies. In addition to his efforts with the mGlu4 project, Dr. Hopkins oversees a team of chemists working on the development of novel M1 positive allosteric modulators for the potential treatment of the cognitive deficits in Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia. Lastly, Dr. Hopkins has had a long standing collaboration with Dr. Charles Hong (Vanderbilt) looking for inhibitors of the BMP pathway for the potential treatment of the rare disease Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva (FOP) which is a devastating disease in children. Dr. Hopkins has been the author or co-author on more than 30 original research manuscripts and more than 15 patents along with numerous review articles, book chapters and invited research talks.

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    Keywords

    allosteric modulation Alzheimer's disease drug discovery GPCR Medicinal chemistry muscarinic receptors Parkinson's disease Schizophrenia