May 12, 2021
By News Director Jared Atha
Southwestern Oklahoma State University in Weatherford recently obtained its first United States Patent, making it one of only four universities in the state that hold U.S. Patents.
The inventors named in the patent are SWOSU Department of Chemistry and Physics Chair and Bernhardt Professor of Chemistry Dr. Tim Hubin; former faculty member in SWOSU Pharmaceutical Sciences M. O. Faruk Khan; and collaborators Babu Tekwani at the University of Mississippi and Steve Archibald at the University in Hull in the United Kingdom.
The patent includes the synthesis of a large class of novel macrocyclic compounds originating in the labs of Hubin and Archibald. These compounds contain multiple nitrogen atoms arranged in ring structures that are further structurally reinforced by additional carbon-chain bridges between nitrogen atoms. These structures allow extremely strong binding to transition metal ions like iron, copper, manganese and many others.
In a press release issued by the university, Dr. Hubin said hundreds of related compounds, either with or without metal ions bound, were tested for the ability to inhibit growth of fungal pathogens, parasites like malaria and leishmania, and bacterial infections. The strongest effect was found to be against several fungal species that cause problematic and often deadly infections such as fungal meningitis, particularly in people with weakened immune systems. Additional strong effects were seen against the parasites that cause, among other things, malaria.
Currently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has only approved four classes of antifungal drugs, and fungi have been quickly developing resistance to all four types of antifungal drugs. The most recently FDA-approved antifungal drug was approved in 2001, and no new ones have been approved in the past 20 years.
The same team of inventors has a second patent pending on related work. Hubin and Archibald will soon be submitting at least two additional patent applications dealing with the uses of related compounds as medical imaging agents and cancer therapeutics.
The patent owned by SWOSU was initially filed in 2016, and after much time and effort put into the project by Dr. Hubin, SWOSU President Dr. Randy Beutler and SWOSU Provost Dr. James South, SWOSU now has its first ever U.S. Patent.
Other universities in Oklahoma that have patented ground-breaking scientific research include the University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State University and the University of Central Oklahoma.
SWOSU has never had a U.S. Patent assigned to it since its founding in 1901.
