The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a three-year, $267,000 grant to Carol Parish, associate professor of chemistry at the University of Richmond (UR), for her work on anti-cancer drugs.

With grant funding provided through NSF’s Research at Undergraduate Institutions program, Prof. Parish will investigate the electronic structure associated with anti-cancer enediyne, a class of molecules activated only in the presence of a cancer cell, warhead drugs. Referred to as prodrugs, they successfully avoid the harmful side effects commonly associated with many chemotherapeutic treatments.