News

May 16, 2025: Damian Ventura successfully defended his thesis titled "On the development of a ssDNA – based biosensor for the detection of R–(+)–kavain." We would like to thank the thesis committee members Dr. Petit and Dr. Keppetipola for their expertise and guidance during Damian's research at CSUF.

April 30, 2025: Amanda Tsang has triumphed at the Titan Grad Slam competition, securing first place and earning the opportunity to represent California State University, Fullerton at the statewide contest at CSU San Bernardino on May 9th, showcasing our research. Good luck, Amanda!

April 29, 2025: Amanda Reyes has successfully defended her thesis titled "Development of Fluorescent Methods to Determine Dissociation Constant for Single Stranded DNA Biosensors." Her research offers significant advancements in the field of biosensors, potentially enhancing the accuracy and efficiency of DNA detection methods. We would like to thank the thesis committee members Dr. Childers and Dr. Keppetipola for their expertise and guidance during Amanda's scientific journey at CSUF. We extend our heartfelt congratulations and best wishes for Amanda's future endeavors.

April 26, 2025: Cassandra Yuan earned first place at the 39th Annual CSU Student Research Competition (SRC), held April 24-25 at Cal Poly Humboldt. More than 200 students from across the California State University system presented their original research through oral presentations. Yuan’s first-place win in the Biological and Agricultural Sciences category focused on her research into dual enzyme inhibition strategies, which have the potential to provide safer alternatives to opioid treatments. Congratulations! Read more here!

April 15, 2025: Dr. Ankita Mohapatra led a project that has received a $353,506 from the U.S. Department of Defense to purchase new equipment and instruments to support interdisciplinary biomedical engineering research and education. Pecic Lab was part of this collaborative project. Read more here. 

April 10, 2025: We just published our latest findings in the journal Biochemistry and Biophysics Reports with our collaborators Dr. Ram Kandasamy from CSU East Bay and Hammock's lab from UC Davis. The manuscript titled: Synthesis and evaluation of isoquinolinyl and pyridinyl-based dual inhibitors of fatty acid amide hydrolase and soluble epoxide hydrolase to alleviate orofacial hyperalgesia in the rat is describing our structure-activity relationship studies and in vivo evaluation of isoquinoline moiety as a potential dual inhibitor scaffold. Read the whole article here.  

April 10, 2025: Our follow-up work on organophosphate compounds inhibiting acetylcholinesterase leading to overstimulation of receptors and severe cholinergic crisis. It was great connecting with the team from Columbia University Medical Center! Read the whole article here.  

March 21, 2025: Leah successfully defended her thesis titled: Development of dual inhibitors as potential therapeutic approach in chronic pain treatment. We thank other committee members, Dr. Andrew Petit and Dr. Ryan Cammarota for their time and feedback. Congratulations, Leah!

March 19, 2025: As part of our Organic Synthesis class we visited Pfizer Laboratories in La Jolla. Our host, Dr. Paul Richardson, gave us the tour of the Structural Biology and Medicinal Chemistry facilities and we were able to learn about modern drug discovery technologies.

February 17, 2025: In our latest work published in Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry, titled: Structure-activity relationship studies and pharmacological evaluation of 4-phenylthiazoles as dual soluble epoxide hydrolase/fatty acid amide hydrolase inhibitors we have synthesized 42 4-thiazole-based analogs, evaluated them in 4 different enzymatic assays and 2 selected compounds were tested in vivo in Formalin test. The team led by Dr. Pecic and Dr. Kandasamy composed of several graduate and undergraduate students from CSU Fullerton and CSU East Bay performed all experiments. We would like to thank our long-standing collaborators Dr. Bruce D. Hammock and Dr. Christophe Morisseau from UC Davis for helping us with this project. Read the whole article here.

January 9, 2025: Several members from Pecic lab attended the annual CSUBiotech symposium that was held in Garden Grove from January 9-11. Amanda Tsang and Emily presented their posters and we had a chance to meet with our collaborator Dr. Kandasamy and his group from CSU East Bay.

December 24, 2024: We are happy to announce that our work "Lipidomics - Driven Drug Discovery and Delivery Strategies in Glioblastoma" has been published in BBA Molecular Basis of Disease, featuring three graduate students as co-authors from our lab: Xiaohui Weng, Michael Gonzalez and Jeannes Angelia. We express our deepest gratitude to our collaborators and co-authors on this project: Dr. Mazaher Ahmadi, Dr. Hamid Latifi-Navis and Dr. Amir Barzegar Behrooz for their contribution. Read the whole article here.  

December 16, 2024: Dr. Pecic presented his poster at the annual WIPOS meeting that was held in Honolulu December 15-20. It was great meeting with our collaborator Dr. Piercey from Purdue University and hearing great talks. Read more about this conference here.

December 10, 2024: Dr. Pecic received the Faculty Recognition: Scholarly and Creative Activities Award at the ceremony organized by Faculty Development Center and Provost's Office at CSUF.

November 26, 2024: Michael Gonzalez succesfully defneded his thesis titled: A Polypharmacology Approach to Developing Multi-Target Directed Ligands as Therapeutics for the Treatment of Alzheimer's Disease. Congratulations, Michael, it was great having you in the lab!

November 23, 2024: Adriana and Annie presented their poster titled: Design and synthesis of 4-phenyl-thiazole-based dual inhibitors of soluble epoxide hydrolase/fatty acid amide hydrolase for chronic pain treatment at the 2024 Southern California Conference for Undergraduate Research (SCCUR) at California State University, San Bernardino. Congratulations!

November 15, 2024: Steve Salinas presented his poster at The Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minoritized Scientists in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Congrats, Steve!

October 21, 2024: Adriana presentated her poster titled: Design and synthesis of 4-phenyl-thiazole-based dual inhibitors of soluble epoxide hydrolase/fatty acid amide hydrolase for chronic pain treatment at the Energy and Sustainability Summit,which was held in the Titan Student Union at CSUF. Congratulations!

October 21, 2024: Jeannes succesfully defended her thesis titled: Development of Multi-Target Directed Ligands for the Treatment of Chronic Pain in Ehlers-Danlos Syndromes. Congratulations, we will miss you and and we wish you all the best in your career!

October 18, 2024: It was great seeing many former members from our lab at Bootleggers in Fullerton and share news and some stories! See you all next year!

October 3, 2024: Dr. Pecic presented a poster at the Art and Science of Total Synthesis of Natural and Designed Molecules for Biology and Medicine: Synthetic Strategies and Methods (ASTS-NDM 2024) that was held in Paris from October 2-4, 2024. This symposium hosted leading experts in the total synthesis field and organic synthesis including KC Nicolaou, Ben Feringa, Morter Meldal and many other famous synthetic chemists. Read the whole program here. 

August 20, 2024: We just published a work in European Journal of Pharmacology titled Targeting PERK and GRP78 in Colorectal Cancer: Genetic Insights and Novel Therapeutic Approaches. EJP is among the top 5% journals in the field of Pharmacology, and we had a privilege to work under the guidance of Dr. Ghavami and several international collaborators. We performed several in silico experiments and this is the first publication for Amanda Reyes! Congratulations to Amanda and all other co-authors! Read the full article here.

August 18, 2024: Leah presented her poster titled Development of dual inhibitors as potential therapeutic approach for chronic pain treatment at the ACS National Meeting in Denver, Colorado. Congratulations!

August 13, 2024: We just published the latest results with our collaborator Dr. Kandasamy from Cal State East Bay. In this work, titled 4-Phenyl-thiazole-based dual inhibitors of fatty acid amide hydrolase and soluble epoxide hydrolase do not alleviate orofacial inflammatory pain in female rats, we performed an SAR study and tested the best dual inhibitor in vivo in a rat model. Congratulations to all co-authors! Read the full article here.

August 9, 2024: Steve Salinas, Annie and Cassandra presented their posters at the Summer Research Symposium organized by UROC and Project Raise at CSUF. Congratulations!

August 8, 2024: Three members from Pecic Lab, Annie, Leah and Cassandra presented their posters at the SoCal Undergraduate Chemistry Research Symposium at UC Irvine. Congratulations!

June 18, 2024: Adriana presented her poster titled: "Design and synthesis of 4-phenylthiazole-based dual soluble epoxy hydrolase/fatty acid amide hydrolase inhibitors as potential therapeutics for the chronic pain treatment", at the American Association for the Advancement of Science Pacific Division Annual Meeting held at the University of San Diego. She won an award for her poster, congratualtions!

July 2, 2024: Our latest viewpoint article, "Multi-Target Directed Ligands and Lipidomics Approach for Glioblastoma Drug Discovery," is now published in Pharma Focus Asia. In this article we collaborated with Dr. Saeid Ghavami, Dr. Rui Vitorino, Dr. Amir Barzegar Behrooz and Arya Emami. Read the full article here.

May 31, 2024: Our collaborative work with Dr. Kandasamy from CSU East Bay and Dr. Hammock from UC Davis titled Quinolinyl-based multitarget-directed ligands with soluble epoxide hydrolase and fatty acid amide hydrolase inhibitory activities: Synthetic studies and pharmacological evaluations is published in Heliyon! Read the full article here.

May 23, 2024: Several students from our lab graduated this year: two graduate students, Jeannes Angelia and Xiaohui Weng, and undergraduate students, Faye Yun (who will continue her education at the USC doctoral program), Heyam Zayed, Melissa Valenzuela, Jasmine Chi, Elijah Baybay and Allen Nguyen. Congratulations! 

May 19, 2024: This year's American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics held it's annual meeting in Arlington, VA. This was an excellent opportunity to present the results from our lab and to meet with our collaborator, Dr. Ram Kandasamy from CSU East Bay. 

May 14, 2024: In collaboration with Dr. Amini and Dr. Baghaei we published a review titled Harnessing exosomes in theranostic applications: advancements and insights in gastrointestinal cancer research in the journal Discover Oncology. Read the full article here.

April 19, 2024: Several members of Pecic Lab received awards at the Annual NSM Award Banquet. Amanda Reyes received Maria Linder Nielson Endowed Graduate Fellowship, Leah received Mark Lackey Award for Graduate Teaching, Paulina Dole got Noorani Family Scholarship,and Adriana Rodriguez received two awards: Wegner Family Scholarship and Outstanding General Chemistry Award. Congratulations!

April 9, 2024: Three students from the Pecic lab attended the National Conference on Undergraduate Research that took place at Long Beach, April 8-10, 2024. Anesa, Leah and Amanda successfully presented their research at the poster session. Congratulations!

March 28, 2024: A master student Xiaohui Weng successfully defended her thesis titled Progressing Glioblastoma Treatment: From Target Identification to Drug Design. Congratulations, Xiaohui!

March 19, 2024: Seven faculty and eight students from the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry attended and presented at the ACS Meeting in New Orleans. Great time, great food and amazing talks!

February 9, 2024: Our novel approach to design non-addictive therapeutics for the treatment of chronic pain was featured at CSUF News! Read the whole article here.

January 12, 2024: Faye and Leah presented their poster at the annual CSUBiotech Symposium in San Jose. Dr. Pecic also presented results from his CURE-based Medicinal Chemistry Lab.

January 8, 2024: We just published a work in the journal Results in Chemistry titled:"One-step microwave enhanced synthesis, biological evaluation, and molecular modeling investigations of donepezil analogs as acetylcholinesterase inhibitors". This work was mainly done by 8 students that were part of the CURE Chem 467 - Medicinal Chemistry lab. Read the whole publication here.  

November 16, 2023: This year the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minoritized Scientists (ABRCMS) was held in Phoenix, Arizona from November 15-18, and Faye presented her research. Congrats Faye! 

We also discussed our NIH-funded project with many peers and had a joint lab meeting with our collaborator Dr. Ram Kandasamy from CSU East Bay.

November 8, 2023: It was great to present our reserach at the International Forum on Research Excellence (IFoRE) held in the Long Beach Conventional Center. This was also an opportunity to catch up with collaborators and friends from AAAS PD.

November 2, 2023: We are happy to share our recent review on Rhabdomyosarcoma: Current Therapy, Challenges, and Future Approaches to Treatment Strategies that we published in the journal Cancers. This significant work included several international experts in the area, and we are happy being a part of this team. You can read the whole publication here. 

October 26, 2023: Xiaohui presented her poser at 2023 ACS Southeastern Regional Meeting in Durham, NC. Congratulations!

October 13, 2023: Chemistry and Biochemistry Department held its annual Alumni Night event at Bootleggers in Fullerton. Several members of Pecic lab were there and we had a wonderful time!