John E Scott

Dr. John E. Scott is an associate professor in the department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and a principal investigator at the Biomanufacturing Research Institute and Technology Enterprise (BRITE). Dr. Scott’s research has focused on breast cancer, drug discovery and drug repurposing. He is actively engaged in using high-throughput screening (HTS) to identify small molecule modulators of enzyme targets using biochemical assays and to identify compounds/drugs active in cell-based assays. This work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Research Triangle Institute (RTI) and other funding agencies.

Dr. Scott earned a B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign followed by a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from Duke University. As a graduate student at Duke University, his research focused on the mechanism of tumor cell recognition and lysis by NK cells. As a postdoctoral researcher at the Upjohn Company, he studied signal transduction requirements for T cell activation. Dr. Scott has over seven years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry in early-phase drug discovery and developing assays for HTS.

As a scientist at Helios Pharmaceuticals, he developed biochemical and cell-based assays, taking projects from gene to compound screening with a validated assay. At Eli Lilly & Co., his research focused on drug discovery by leading high-throughput assay development and screening and providing scientific leadership for screening campaigns. He was an active member of Lilly’s kinase-focused drug discovery program and directed the development and validation of 17 kinase assays for a variety of kinase targets. After leaving Lilly, he joined NCCU in 2006 and initiated his academic research.