May 14 2004
Media Advisory
To: News Directors and News Editors
From: Veronika Avery, Assistant Director of Media Relations, 342-5444

Undergraduate Student Awarded for Research

Shenouda S. Yacoub, a ULM undergraduate working with Dr. Khalid El Sayed, assistant professor of basic pharmaceutical sciences, received a $2500 award from the American Society of Pharmacognosy (ASP). Yacoub competed with other students on a national level, submitting a proposal entitled "Development of the Marine Triterpene Sipholanes as Angiogenesis Modulators." The ASP will announce his name, along with other winners on their website, www.phcog.org.

Pharmacognosy is the science of finding useful drugs from natural products, such as plants, microbes and marine invertebrates. Yacoub, along with Dr. El Sayed, are trying to isolate new anticancer compounds from marine sponges. Recently, Yacoub has isolated one new, and two known natural products from Red Sea sponges, all of which show positive signs of anticancer.

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