About
Mark Wentland began his career in medicinal chemistry in 1970 at Sterling Winthrop Inc. In 1971, he joined the chemistry faculty at Rensselaer as Adjunct Professor of Chemistry teaching evening graduate-level courses. In 1994, he left Sterling-Winthrop to become Professor of Chemistry at Rensselaer. He held the concurrent position of Adjunct Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Albany Medical College during 1997-2015. Following his retirement from Rensselaer at the end of 2015, he was appointed to the position of Professor Emeritus.
PhD: Rice University, 1970, Organic Chemistry
BS: Central Connecticut State College, 1966, Chemistry
Research
Professor Wentland's scholarly activities at Rensselaer centered around an NIH-funded effort to identify orally available modulators of mu and kappa opioid receptors. One such modulator, samidorphan, exhibited extremely high binding affinity (Ki = 0.052 nM) and potent antagonism for the mu receptor.
Discoveries, including samidorphan, made in his group's laboratories were patented by Rensselaer and developed by Rensselaer's licensing partner Alkermes Inc. LYBALVI, an oral medication combining samidorphan with olanzapine, was approved by the US FDA in mid-2021 to treat schizophrenia and bipolar I disorder in adults. Olanzapine is an established antipsychotic agent that can cause significant weight gain. The role of samidorphan is to mitigate olanzapine-associated weight gain.
• Rensselaer chemistry team members
• Academic collaborators:
- Dr. Jean Bidlack and coworkers (U of Rochester)
- Dr. Lindsay Hough and coworkers (Albany Medical College)
Teaching
Courses Wentland taught at RPI from 1971-2015 (click here for descriptions):
• CHEM 2250 - Organic Chemistry I
• CHEM 2260 - Organic Chemistry II
• CHEM 4300 - Medicinal Chemistry
• CHEM 4330 - Drug Discovery
• CHEM 4340 - Drug Discovery Laboratory
• CHEM 6210 - Advanced Organic Chemistry I
• CHEM 6220 - Advanced Organic Chemistry II
• CHEM 6300 - Medicinal Chemistry
• CHEM 6330 - Drug Discovery
• CHEM 6960 - Alkaloid Synthesis
Publications
Samidorphan first appeared in the literature in 2005. A 2009 publication provided further details on the design, crystallography and structure-activity relationships of samidorphan.
The following is a selection of recent publications in Scopus. Mark Wentland has 70 indexed publications in the subjects of Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics, Chemistry.
News
Approval of Lybalvi: RPI Press release