Robert A. Coover PhD

Robert Coover received his Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He then received his PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at Virginia Commonwealth University. After honing skills in chemistry and its application to medicine, he decided to postdoc in an environment that would complement those skills and allow him to work on his life’s passion: Developing effective treatments for Neurofibromatosis Type 1. He did his postdoc at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital under the mentorship of Nancy Ratner. While there he successfully obtained external funding and published his research. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Medicinal Chemistry in the Fred Wilson School of Pharmacy, Department of Basic Pharmaceutical Sciences at High Point University, where he heads a lab that utilizes his dual training to target and treat NF1.

The Coover Lab is actively using new technologies to advance novel compounds for Neurofibromatosis Type 1 research.

Active Projects include:

1. Development of agonists and other small molecules to compensate for or restore aberrant signaling in an NF1 deficient setting.
2. Investigating receptor regulation and activity at the protein level in NF1. The techniques employed here utilize small molecules and bioengineering to determine the molecular underpinnings of cognitive manifestations observed in NF1 patients.

Link to PubMed