Business awards earned in Tucson and Southern Arizona

Meredith Hay and May Khanna: The National Academy of Inventors has named 61 academic inventors to the 2021 class of NAI Senior Members. Among them are University of Arizona Health Sciences professors May Khanna and Meredith Hay.

Hay joined the University of Arizona Health Sciences faculty in 2008. She is a professor of physiology in the University of Arizona College of Medicine — Tucson and is a member of the BIO5 Institute, Sarver Heart Center and Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute. Internationally known for her work in cardiovascular neurobiology, Hay was one of the first scientists to look at the role of sex differences in the development of hypertension. Her studies helped establish guidelines to include gender differences in the treatment of high blood pressure.

Her research also focuses on inflammation-related brain disease and the development of novel peptides to inhibit this inflammatory cascade and improve brain blood flow. Substantial evidence links increases in systemic inflammation to impaired cognitive function. In addition, scientific studies have linked early Alzheimer’s disease to inflammation in the brain.

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Khanna is an assistant professor of pharmacology in the College of Medicine — Tucson, as well as a member of the BIO5 Institute and the Center for Innovation in Brain Science. Her background includes training in chemistry, structural biology, biophysics and drug discovery in neurodegenerative diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. She joined the University of Arizona Health Sciences faculty in 2014.

Khanna’s research is aimed at shortening the time between drug discovery and pre-clinical testing by targeting key protein-protein and protein-RNA interactions in neurodegenerative diseases. With more than 20 years’ research experience in RNA, protein chemistry, molecular and structural biology and drug discovery, she is focused on accelerating the development of novel therapeutics. She, along with Rajesh Khanna and Vijay Gokhale, invented a new class of non-opioid compounds to treat pain.

The trio of University of Arizona researchers worked with TLA to patent the technology and develop a strategy for their startup, Regulonix LLC.