The Freshman Research Initiative (FRI) program mourns the loss of one of our faculty, Dr. Walter (Walt) Fast, Division Head and Professor of Chemical Biology & Medicinal Chemistry, William I. Dismukes Fellow and Southwestern Drug Corporation Centennial Endowed Fellow in Pharmacy, and principal investigator (PI) for the Virtual Cures Stream, who passed away in December.
Dr. Fast's journey with FRI began in 2008 as a co-principal investigator alongside Dr. Jon Robertus (Professor Emeritus, Molecular Biosciences). In 2015, following Dr. Robertus' retirement, Dr. Fast assumed full leadership of the stream with Dr. Josh Beckham as Research Educator. Students in this biochemistry-focused stream aim to identify new drugs from virtual libraries of drug-like molecules using a combination of wet-laboratory and computational research techniques. Specifically, researchers use virtual drug screening software to predict compounds that can bind to target enzymes – inhibiting their activity and potentially mitigating the pathological effects associated with human diseases. Then, target molecules can be tested in the lab to determine their efficacy compared to in computational models. Dr. Fast provided strategic direction of the stream, including offshoot and parallel projects from his lab to the Accelerated Research Initiative (ARI) students who worked on investigating drug targets for NDM-1, VIM-2, KPC-2 beta-lactamases. Contributions toward this work was published in ACS Infectious Diseases in 2022.
Additionally, Dr. Fast offered concept and guidance on High School Research Initiative projects related to findng therapeutics to target TEM-1 beta-lactamase. Furthermore, he facilitated several collaborations with other labs and the stream.
Stream researchers with Dr. Fast & Dr. Beckham in 2017.
In honor of Dr. Fast's outstanding impact on undergraduate research, FRI will dedicate the Virtual Cure Stream's first year summer research fellowships in his name.
