Investigators

Summary

Dr. Johnston has over two decades of drug discovery experience in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and academic sectors. Since joining the University of Pittsburgh Department of Pharmacology & Chemical Biology in 2005 to help design and build the infrastructure for a high-throughput drug discovery screening center at the Drug Discovery Institute, Dr. Johnston has led 21 screening campaigns, and reconfigured the NCI 60 cell line assays for cancer drug combination screening. In 2011, Dr. Johnston joined the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences in the School of Pharmacy to establish chemical biology laboratories, where he has continued to conduct his research in high-throughput and high-content screening (HTS/HCS) assay development and implementation, and to establish drug discovery collaborations throughout the scientific community. His research has focused on pursuing chemical biology approaches to identify small molecules with the potential to be developed into new therapies for prostate cancer, melanoma and head and neck cancer.