Distinguished chemist Milton Brown will be the featured speaker at UNC Asheville's 11th annual S. Dexter Squibb Lecture Series October 30-31. Brown is the founder and director of the Drug Discovery Program at Georgetown University's Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. His two talks are free and open to the public.

Brown will discuss "Drug Discovery: An Evolving Role in Academic Research" at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 30, in UNC Asheville's Rhoades-Robinson Hall room 125. He will present an overview of the current scope of drug discovery and design, as well as the roles multiple disciplines play in medicinal and therapeutic research.

Brown will lecture on "Targeting Voltage Gated Sodium Channels as a New Treatment for Prostate Cancer" at 1:45 p.m. Friday, Oct. 31, in UNC Asheville's Karpen Hall room 038. This talk will be geared toward natural scientists and students.

Brown, also known as "Dr. Drug Discovery," has 15 years of experience in developing new drugs in the fields of cancer and neuroscience. He has designed and synthesized more than 1,000 targeted compounds for studies at the National Cancer Institute and other United States cancer centers. Brown holds a doctorate in synthetic chemistry from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and a medical degree and post-doctoral training from the University of Virginia.

The S. Dexter Squibb Endowed Distinguished Lectureship brings well-known scientists to the UNC Asheville campus to give lectures and to meet with University students and faculty, as well as high school science students and administrators. The lecture series honors S. Dexter Squibb, former UNC Asheville Chemistry Department chair. Squibb joined the faculty in 1964 and was instrumental in developing UNC Asheville's Chemistry Department into a certified four-year program.

For more information, call UNC Asheville's Chemistry Department at 828/251-6443 or email bhenders@unca.edu.