Peter Tonge

Peter Tonge is a professor of Chemistry and of Radiology (by courtesy), and the director of Infectious Disease Research in the Institute for Chemical Biology & Drug Discovery at Stony Brook University. He is also the co-director of the Chemical Biology Training Program, and the director of the Biomolecular Imaging Cluster. His research program combines kinetic, structural, synthetic, computational and biophysical approaches to develop inhibitors of enzyme drug targets, and to understand the mechanism of photoreceptors and optogenetic devices. A primary focus of his program involves the development of inhibitors that have extended target engagement, enabling dosing frequency and exposure to be reduced, resulting in decreased side effects, increased compliance and reduced drug resistance. This is aided by the development of mathematical PK-PD models that integrate drug-target binding kinetics into the prediction of drug activity in humans, and the use of positron emission tomography to non-invasively image drug biodistribution.