Graduate Student Research Assistant
University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy
My name is Madeline Stewart, BS and I am a PhD candidate at the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy (UKCOP) in Lexington, Kentucky. I graduated from the University of Alabama (UA) in May 2018 with a BS in Biological Sciences, and I was a member of the Randall Research Scholars Program, formerly the Computer-Based Honors Program, in the Honors College. During my time as an undergraduate, I had a variety of research experiences, both at UA and through an internship at the National Center for Toxicological Research (NCTR) with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). It was this internship with the FDA that ignited my passion for pharmaceutical research, leading me to pursue a PhD focused on drug discovery and development in the UKCOP Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences. The majority of my graduate studies have been dedicated to the development of novel microsomal prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) synthase 1 (mPGES-1) inhibitors for the treatment of inflammation and pain, though I have also worked on elucidating the role of the hunger hormone, ghrelin, in substance-induced reward, as well as expressed the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein for a project to facilitate community testing in rural Kentucky during the beginning of the pandemic.