John Stubbs presents posters at American Chemical Society National Meeting

John Stubbs, Ph.D., assistant professor of chemistry, presented two posters at the 243rd American Chemical Society National Meeting at the end of March in San Diego, California.

The first included work carried out with faculty collaborator Amy Deveau, Ph.D., associate professor of chemistry, and Jennifer Bayron (Biochemistry ’10).  Titled “Relationships between opioid receptor affinity and calculated properties of 6 alpha- and 6 beta-naltrexol and derivatives,” this project investigated whether relative binding affinities could be predicted.  A conformational preference was found to be related to mu receptor affinity while solvent interaction energy was found to be related to kappa receptor affinity, both of which can be used to inform the choice of new molecules to study for opioid receptor binding.

The second poster, titled, “Monte Carlo molecular simulation of ethyl benzene partitioning between supercritical ethane and polyethylene glycol,” investigated the use of an environmentally-friendly biphasic solvent system for the purification of chemical reaction products and indentified solvent density as the important factor that controls the extent of separation.

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