Dr. Mary P. McCourt

Biography

Dr. Mary P. McCourt is a senior scientist with extensive experience in the implementation of new laboratories, management of technical, professional, faculty, research, legal, architectural and administrative staff. Her critical expert areas include computational chemistry and molecular modeling, cancer-targeted drug design and structural biology with emphasis on lipids.

There are two main areas of research interest in Dr. McCourt’s lab.  The first area concerns the development of Cholestosome ^TM technology and the second area concerns urine based biomarker analysis for diagnostic screens focused on both Breast Cancer as well as Alzheimer’s disease.  In addition, Dr. McCourt has started a company, MMC Lipid Bioservices, which is concerned with optimization of the formulation technology for Cholestosome ^TM.

Dr. McCourt brings research experience and expertise in

• Integration of computational techniques and experimental methods for product design.
• Individualized lipid delivery for tissue culture.
• Small molecule drug design including thyromimetics, substituted hydroxyurea analogs and cantharidin.
• Development of NMR for metabolomic markers.
• Technical expertise in SYBYL, DSC, X-ray structure determination using SNB as well as other direct methods and development of 2-D electron diffraction data into 3-D direct methods.
• Designing nanoscale non-liposomal stealth vehicles, implementing proof of principle experiments using breast cancer cell lines.
• Designing structural biology and chemistry laboratories from scratch. Proposed vision, obtained funding, developed, designed and implemented from the ground up a computational drug design laboratory and analytical instrumentation laboratory (NMR, DSC, HP-LC, AA, TGA, Uv-Vis).

Focus of Teaching

Dr. Mary P. McCourt specializes in the areas of physical and computational chemistry. She also teaches chemistry for nurses, general chemistry lab, and chemistry for non-majors.

Educational Background

• Ph.D. Chemistry (1988). SUNY at Buffalo.
• M.A. History (1984). SUNY at Buffalo.
• B.A./B.S. Chemistry/History (1983). SUNY at Buffalo.