FGCU students creating molecules to help medication development

Students at Florida Gulf Coast University are using chemistry to help drug companies make your medications more affordable.

Scientists at FGCU call themselves “molecular architects” and they are working to save lives.

“Anti cancer, anti HIV, we’re working on anti diabetic medications.”

These medicines help from anything from headaches to cancer depend on molecules which aren’t always easy or cheap for drug companies to get.

The students at FGCU aim to solve that problem.

“The more people who step outside of their life and reach out to help people is what it’s all about,” said June Sommerfield who is a retired nurse.

Sommerfield knows what it’s like to watch people deal with disease day in and day out.

“And it was breaking my heart, of course,” she said.

Now, Daniel Quiroz is part of a student team working to help people living with disease.

“We’re starting out from more bio-renewable resources in an attempt to make some medicines that are pretty rare,” Quiroz said.

These molecules are found in nature, but there aren’t always enough to go around. In their lab, they are able to replicate them which helps in new medication development.

“We’ve made some progress that can be used as anti-HIV or anti-cancer medications, and we hoped to be finished with that in the next few months,” said Greg Boyce who is the professor leading these students on their medical mission.

“It’s extremely gratifying. At FGCU, we’re primarily an undergrad institution. All this work is done just by undergraduates,” said Boyce.

Brittany Klootwyk is another one of those undergrads.

“If we can limit the number of steps and make it cheaper in a more efficient way with less byproduct, then other companies that want to test these products can have them more readily available,” she said.

This is an idea that Sommerfield hopes can help patients like the ones she cared for.

“And that, to me, is the most important thing we can do in all of our lives,” Sommerfield said.

The project has been active for about two years.

Students are also working on a medication that could treat human papillomavirus or HPV which affects 79 million Americans in their late teens and early 20s, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.