Primary Job Title Founder Primary Organization 
PNP Therapeutics
Gender Male
Parker obtained a Ph.D. in Pharmacology in 1984 from George Washington University and received further post-doctoral research training at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1984 to 1988). During his research career at Southern Research Institute (1988 to 2015) he studied the mechanism of action of purine and pyrimidine
antimetabolites, which are an important class of drugs used in the treatment of cancers and viral infections. His research was supported by twelve grants from the National Institutes of Health. He is currently working with PNP Therapeutics Inc. to advance a novel therapy for the treatment of solid tumors. He is an adjunct professor in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Alabama Birmingham (UAB) and the Comprehensive Cancer Center at UAB.
Because of his research, Dr. Parker has gained world-wide recognition as an expert on the development of nucleoside analogs for the treatment of cancer and viral infections. He has published more than 100 peer reviewed manuscripts that describe his research including a comprehensive review describing the enzymology and mechanism of action of all purine and pyrimidine antimetabolites that are currently used to treat cancer. He was chair of the Nucleosides, Nucleotides, & Oligonucleotides Gordon Conference in 2013, an international meeting that is devoted to drug discovery involving these molecules. He has served on numerous peer review panels for various journals and the National Institutes of Health to review manuscripts and grant applications that involve research into the development of new anticancer and antiviral drugs.
