Dr. William Gerwick, Ph.D.

Dr. Gerwick's research focuses on exploring the unique natural products of marine algae and cyanobacteria for useful biomedical properties. These chemically prolific organisms are sources of numerous highly unusual metabolites, and the Gerwick group has been involved in their discovery and evaluation in the areas of cancer, inflammation, infectious disease including tropical diseases such as malaria, Chagas’ disease, leishmaniasis, neurochemical pathways, antiviral activity to SARS-COV-2 as well as agricultural uses. The Gerwick group has also examined the pathways of biosynthesis of many of the compounds they have discovered over the years, and pioneered the characterization of their origins at the molecular genetic and genomic levels.

Dr. Gerwick's group uses SCUBA to collect marine samples from around the world, such as Panama, Madagascar, Papua New Guinea and Guam, and then grows many of these life forms in the laboratory in La Jolla. Extracts of these organisms are tested for bioactivity, and the active compounds are isolated and structures defined using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and mass spectrometry (MS). In the course of this work, a number of new methods of structure analysis have been developed, such as the Deep Learning of NMR spectra called Small Molecule Accurate Recognition Technology (SMART), https://smart.ucsd.edu/classic). Highly interesting metabolites are developed through collaboration with academic and industrial researchers. We are now pursuing several of our lead molecules using synthetic medicinal chemistry and molecular modeling to produce even more active and selective analogs, especially in the area of malaria and other parasitic disease organisms