Flora Lichtman

It sounds like you're a man on a mission.

Can you sum up the mission?

Spoken like a true chemist.

So it just seems like... And you were like, I can do something about this.

So I want to talk about where you think you could have the biggest impact.

Do you have a white whale of wildlife diseases?

I heard about your patient Pebbles.

Tell me more.

Here's a giant reptile just spit in a tube and yeah, a medicine comes out.

besides pebbles, can you give me one more example of, um, wildlife where you have intervened?

How do you give a sea turtle a cancer drug?

Right.

I mean, that brings up what must be a big challenge of this work, that animals have different physiology than we do.

Yeah, and I guess, you know, the pharmaceutical industry, as you say, with Gila monsters has gotten a lot out of animals.

Dr. Tim Cernak is an associate professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Michigan.

Tim, thank you so much for joining me.

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