Dr. Donna Zhang Named Musil Family Endowed Chair for Drug Discovery

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Dr. Donna Zhang, University of Arizona (UA) Superfund Research Center (SRC) Investigator and professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the College of Pharmacy, has been formally vested as the Musil Family Endowed Chair for Drug Discovery.

Zhang is an internationally recognized researcher who has spent her career focusing on the transcription factor NRF2, where she has made a number of profound contributions. Zhang’s NRF2-related investigations have played a central role in unraveling one of the human body’s most remarkable defense systems. Her research has set the foundation for the field, shown evidence of a strategy to alleviate arsenic-promoted diseases and paved a two-directional therapeutic path using NRF2 inducers to prevent cancer or NRF2 inhibitors to enhance the efficacy of cancer treatment.

Zhang received the prestigious NIH/NIEHS Outstanding New Environmental Health Scientists (ONES) Award in 2006 and an American Cancer Society grant shortly after she began at the University of Arizona; she has maintained at least two national grants since that time. Throughout her career Dr. Zhang has published nearly 150 peer-reviewed research papers and review articles in many of the most highly regarded journals.

Zhang said, “I was thrilled to find out that I had been named the Musil Family Endowed Chair for Drug Discovery. My research has always focused on translating mechanistic, laboratory-based findings into novel therapeutic options to treat disease. In this regard, drug discovery, validation, and optimization remains a vital part of achieving this goal, and I am proud to represent a chair position dedicated to not only a particular passion of mine, but also an important aspect of advancing medical science moving forward.”

Please join us in congratulating Dr. Zhang!