Jon Scott Thorson, Ph.D., Professor, Associate Dean of Research. Professor Thorson joined the UK College of Pharmacy in the Fall of 2011 as the first director of the new UK Center for Pharmaceutical Research and Innovation (2011-2020), interim co-director of the Markey Cancer Center’s Drug Discovery, Delivery, and Translational Therapeutics Program (2012-2015) and co-director of the Drug Discovery and Development Module in the UK Center for Clinical and Translational Science (2012-present).
Under Professor Jon Scott Thorson leadership, CPRI developed into an NIGMS-supported P20 Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE, 2020-present). Jon was named a University Research Professor (2018) and also serves as the associate dean of research/chief scientific officer for the College of Pharmacy (2020-present).
Professor Thorson’s research interests include chemical biology, the discovery and application of natural products and biocatalysts, biosynthesis and mechanistic enzymology , and enzyme engineering and evolution. The Thorson group has also been credited with pioneering strategies for natural products and small molecule glycorandomization.
He is also working as Principal Investigator of the Center of Biomedical Research Excellence in Pharmaceutical Research and Innovation, Kentucky