Jane V Aldrich, Ph.D.

Jane V. Aldrich, Ph.D., joined the University of Florida as professor of medicinal chemistry in 2015 under UF’s preeminence initiative in drug discovery and development. Dr. Aldrich’s research on analogs of opioid peptides has been continuously funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse for over 25 years, and she has been the principal investigator of over $14 million in research grants. Following receiving her Ph.D. in medicinal chemistry, Dr. Aldrich was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at the University of Minnesota where she began her research on opioid peptides. She subsequently rose through the ranks at Oregon State University and the University of Maryland Baltimore prior to moving to the University of Kansas as professor of medicinal chemistry in 2001. Dr. Aldrich has served the scientific community in multiple capacities. She is currently chair of the NIH Drug Discovery for the Nervous System Study Section and also a Councilor for the Medicinal Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society. She has also served as chair of the Medicinal Chemistry Division, president of the American Peptide Society, and co-chair of the Gordon Research Conference on the Chemistry and Biology of Peptides. She is currently on the editorial board of the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry and previously was an editor of the journal Letters in Peptide Science.

Dr. Aldrich’s research focuses on the design and synthesis of peptide and peptidomimetic analogs of opioid peptides, along with the development of synthetic methods to prepare these compounds. A major emphasis has been peptide ligands for kappa opioid receptors as potential treatments for pain and drug abuse. These have included novel cyclic peptides that are active after oral administration, in addition to analogs of the endogenous dynorphin opioid peptides. These peptides are studied both in vitro for opioid activity and in vivo in collaboration with Dr. Jay McLaughlin in the Department of Pharmacodynamics. Dr. Aldrich’s laboratory is also studying the anticancer activity of novel cyclic peptides and has designed and synthesized labeled opioid peptides as tools to study opioid receptors.

• Drug abuse
• Drug discovery
• Medicinal chemistry
• Peptides

0000-0002-7954-9850