News & Media

Find the Zheng Laboratory’s latest announcements, news, and media coverage here.

Recent Lab Announcements

The illustration depicts a chimera labeled PROTAC attacking small, aggressive looking caricatures of labeled BCL-XL and BCL-2. The chimera has a lion head roaring as he crushes a BCL-XL creature beneath his paw, a snake head constricting around a BCL-2 creature, and finally a goat head with his mouth open and tongue out as if mid-yell. In the upper left corner, a BCL-XL and BCL-2 creature hold crossed spears in front of a red, smiling creature labeled Cyst-C.
Illustration from Pratik Pal’s recent manuscript om the discovery of a novel BCL-XL PROTAC degrader published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry – click to see full size image
  • NOVEMBER 2022 | Saikat received the Outstanding Merit Award from the UF International Center!
  • SEPTEMBER 2022 | Saikat received the Best Poster Award at the UF Chemistry-Biology Interface Symposium! Great work!
  • AUGUST 2022 | Alexis received the NIH/NIGMS Chemistry-Biology Interface T32 Training Fellowship! Congrats!
  • MAY 2022 | Congratulations to Alexis for receiving the Junior Award for Excellence in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry!
  • MAY 2022 | Congrats to Alexis for winning the Best Graduate Student Seminar Presentation Award in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry!
  • MAY 2022 | Best of luck to our postdoctoral fellow Pratik who has accepted a new position at Bristol Myers Squibb! We will miss you and all of your contributions to our work!
  • MAY 2022 | Welcome to our new postdoctoral fellow Saikat Das! We look forward to your contributions!
  • APRIL 2022 | Congratulations to Matt and Alexis on the publication of their review article “Overcoming Cancer Drug Resistance Utilizing PROTAC Technology” in Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology!
  • APRIL 2022 | Welcome to our new postdoctoral fellow Hui Li! We look forward to working with you!
  • SEPTEMBER 2021 | Congratulations to our lab post-doctoral fellow Pratik Pal, PhD, for the publication of his manuscript “Discovery of a Novel BCL-XL PROTAC Degrader with Enhanced BCL-2 Inhibition” in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.
  • JUNE 2021 | Our Principle Investigator, Dr. Guangrong Zheng, has been awarded tenure at the University of Florida College of Pharmacy.
  • APRIL 2021 | Pratik Pal, PhD, has won the Best Oral Presentation Award in the postdoctoral category at the 4th UF Drug Discovery Symposium hosted by the UF College of Pharmacy’s Center for Natural Products, Drug Discovery and Development (CNPD3). The title of his presentation is “Discovery of a BCL-XL/BCL-2 dual function PROTAC.” Congratulations!
  • APRIL 2021 | Zhixing Wu, PhD, has joined the Zheng Lab as an Research Assistant Professor. Welcome!

Media Coverage

News4JaX | Mar 2021

UF cancer drug receives FDA clearance for clinical trials

An anticancer drug developed by researchers from the University of Florida College of Pharmacy has become the first drug of its kind allowed to proceed to clinical trial by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The drug, DT2216, targets leukemia, lymphoma, and breast and lung cancers. The researchers expect it will available for patients, in a clinical trial setting, in April or May this year.

UF Health cancer center | feb 2021

UF researchers developing new cancer immunotherapy drug

University of Florida Health Cancer Center researchers have found a potential new way of targeting this population of immune-suppressive T cells that could possibly benefit a large population of cancer patients, including those who will not respond to other immunotherapies. The researchers discovered that B-cell lymphoma extra-large, or BCL-XL, is a potential molecular target of TI-Tregs, which play an important role within tumors to promote an immunosuppressive microenvironment and inhibit anti-cancer immunity.