Roles
Associate Professor
Director, Drug Discovery, DRI
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Biography
Dr. Buchwald obtained a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutics (Computer-Aided Drug Design) from the University of Florida in 1997 under the mentorship of Dr. Nicholas Bodor. Following his graduation, he worked both in industrial (IVAX Corp. and Teva Pharmaceuticals Ltd) and academic settings including the University of Miami. He published >130 publications in peer-reviewed journals covering a wide variety of fields and including >40 as first author and >50 as corresponding author. He has >5,000 citations and an h-index of 38 (Google Scholar). In recognition of his contributions to the pharmaceutical sciences, he was elected to the rank of AAAS Fellow by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS; https://www.aaas.org/fellows) in 2014. -
Education & Training
Education
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Honors & Awards
No result found
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Teaching Interests
Dr. Buchwald is involved in the education of medical students as well as graduate pharmacology students at the University of Miami. Since 2022, he serves as the Director of the Scholarly Concentration Pathways for the NextGen MD curriculum.
For pharmacology students, he has been teaching the Mechanism of Drug Action (MCP704) class for more than a decade. This course focuses on a basic scientific understanding of the main processes underlying drug action. It briefly covers all important aspects of both the pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic phases including (i) a review of the receptor concept and related general principles; (ii) a detailed discussion of quantitative models of receptor occupancy, agonism, and antagonism; (iii) basic concepts related to absorption, distribution, metabolism, and elimination (ADME) processes and pharmacokinetics; (iv) illustrative molecular mechanisms of action for a few representative drug classes; and (v) an overview of the drug design and discovery process. -
Research Interests
Current research within the Drug Discovery program led by Dr. Buchwald at the Diabetes Research Institute (DRI) is mainly focused on immune-modulatory therapies intended to prevent or reverse type 1 (insulin-dependent or juvenile-onset) diabetes (T1D) or to benefit islet cell transplant recipients. Because even with well-managed insulin therapy, chronic and degenerative complications still occur in a considerable fraction of T1D patients and because T1D is the only autoimmune disease without an approved immune therapy, there is a considerable therapeutic need for safe and effective immune interventions that could prevent or reverse T1D without causing unacceptable side effects. Research in DRI's Drug Discovery group is focused on several different strategies, including (i) identification of small-molecule modulators for costimulatory protein-protein interactions such as CD40-CD154, (ii) localized immune modulation for safer therapies, (iii) detailed characterization of glucose-stimulated insulin secretion and islet function, and (iv) development of a general quantitative receptor model.
(i) Immune checkpoint regulating co-signaling interactions including those in the TNF superfamily are promising therapeutic targets for immune modulation. We have identified the first published small molecules that inhibit the CD40-CD40L protein-protein interaction (PPI) and are working on developing novel, more specific and drug-like compounds (e.g., DRI-C21045) as lead candidates to develop clinically useful therapeutics.
(ii) Establishing an effective local immune-suppression and anti-inflammatory (LISAI) regimen can provide improved graft survival and function while minimizing the side effects of systemic immune therapies by focusing them at the site of transplantation and reducing their dose. We have been exploring several options toward this including the use of nanotechnologies such as drug-integrating amphiphilic nanomaterial assemblies (DIANAs) in collaboration with biomedical engineering.
(iii) To improve the characterization of islet mass and function, we are combining computational modeling, digital image analysis (DIA), and dynamic glucose-stimulated insulin secretion (GSIS) assays. We are also interested in the identification of early biomarkers of the degradation of islet / beta cell function (e.g., omics approaches).
(iv) Due to our interest in quantitative pharmacology and receptor-ligand interactions in general, we have introduced and are working on further extending a quantitative receptor model (SABRE) that includes parameters for signal amplification, binding affinity, receptor activation efficacy, and even constitutive activity. -
Publications
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Copyrights & Patents