The Department of Nematology's weekly NEMA 250 seminar series is presented this week by:

Peter J. Roy, Ph.D., Professor, Canada Research Chair in Chemical Genetics, Department of Molecular Genetics & Department of Pharmacology & Toxicology, University of Toronto

Seminar Title: “Novel Approaches Towards Identifying Lead Anthelmintic and Nematicide Small Molecules"

Brief Biography: Peter Roy is Professor at the University of Toronto in the Dept of Molecular Genetics and Dept of Pharmacology and Toxicology. He is a member of the Donnelly Centre and Canada Research Chair in Chemical Genetics. Peter has used the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans as a model system for over 30 years. For the last 20 years, he has been interested in identifying useful drug-like small molecules for use in chemical-genetic experiments to better understand C. elegans biology. Some of the small molecules that his group have discovered have the potential to control parasitic nematodes.

Seminar Summary: Peter will present an overview of his group’s efforts to use C. elegans to identify potentially useful nematicides/anthelmintics and then introduce their newest nematicide call Cyprocide that has broad-spectrum activity against plant parasitic nematodes. Details on the Cyprocide story can now be read on BioRxiv (see https://tinyurl.com/2vw7kmjw).