Stanton McHardy began his college career at Texas Lutheran University as a business major. He finished it with a degree—not in business—but in chemistry. And not only that, but the 1990 grad pursued that study of chemistry all the way through his PhD and beyond, eventually becoming a decorated scientist and inventor.
Back to the TLU years: McHardy found his way to chemistry through a few great professors—Dr. Harold Beyer, Dr. David Wasmund, and Dr. Preston Reeves. “I was extremely fortunate to receive a Welch Research Fellowship from Dr. Reeves my junior and senior years,” says McHardy. “During this time, I carried out independent research with Dr. Reeves and had the opportunity to present my work at a regional ACS meeting. This experience and Dr. Reeves’s mentorship is what drew me into the world of organic chemistry and led me to pursue a chemistry PhD.”
“Stan came into chemistry searching for something,” Reeves remembers. “As I recall he took chemistry for non-majors (kiddy chem as we called it). He found chemistry interesting and took some more chem classes. He was then ‘hooked’ and evolved from a member of the class into a scholar. It was then on to research and finally a PhD at Utah. Indeed, it has been a pleasure to see Stan’s growth and success in chemistry.”
“I can honestly say without a doubt that I would not be where I am today if it had not been for my TLU chemistry professors and especially Dr. Reeves,” says McHardy.
He fondly remembers his undergrad years at TLU, recalling “time with the TLU soccer team and our coach Roger Wrobel, weekends with my Omega Tau brethren, and endless hours of time spent on the third floor of the Moody Science building preparing for chemistry exams and doing research.” He was also a member of Pi Rho, the chemistry club. “All four years were great times!”
After graduation, McHardy went on to the University of Utah, where he studied organic chemistry, earned his PhD, and did his post-doctoral study. From there, he launched his career by joining the Neuroscience Drug Discovery group at Pfizer Global Research and Development in Groton, Connecticut. “I started at Pfizer as a research scientist and finished my career there as an Associate Director in Neuroscience Drug Discovery, developing drug candidates for addiction, schizophrenia, depression, and ADHD.” That all took place from 1996 to 2006.
Then a family move brought McHardy home to Texas. The New Braunfels native took a position at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, where he was an Assistant Director of Medicinal and Process Chemistry. He stayed there for the next six or so years. That was when the University of Texas at San Antonio recruited him to run the Center for Innovative Drug Discovery (CIDD), a joint venture between UT Health San Antonio and UTSA whose purpose is to support the advancement of drug discovery research and education, ultimately for the development of innovative therapeutics.
By 2012, McHardy was an associate professor of research in UTSA’s College of Sciences and co-director of the CIDD. Those two positions married well. “All of my research work in my individual lab and the CIDD is focused on medicinal chemistry and drug discovery, so the two are very synergistic,” he says. Within his own medicinal chemistry and synthesis research labs at UTSA, you’ll find everyone from PhD to undergrad students doing research under McHardy’s watchful eye.
What does that research entail? “We work in many therapeutic areas of drug discovery,” says McHardy. Most of the focus is on cancers, such as glioblastoma, triple-negative breast cancers, and the like. But for the past few years, McHardy’s work has expanded into an area of drug discovery known as protein degradation and the discovery of PROTAC (Proteolysis-Targeting Chimeric) molecules.
For the non-scientists among us, glioblastoma is a type of malignant brain tumor. Triple-negative breast cancer is an aggressive form of breast cancer which is harder to treat than other forms. And protein degraders and PROTAC technology are showing great promise in the realm of cutting-edge cancer therapies—the kind of therapies that can target disease and help the body fight it. “This is an exciting new area that many pharma companies are pursuing as well, with some of the most advanced PROTAC compounds now in Phase IIb clinical trials,” says McHardy. “All of our work in the CIDD in this area is very early pre-clinical and exploratory research, but as an example, we are trying to develop PROTAC molecules for rare cancers such as pediatric leukemias.”
This is the kind of work that doesn’t go without recognition—although for scientists like McHardy, the great rewards certainly come through discovery and progress. Nevertheless, he has been honored many times over for his work—most recently having been named a Fellow in the National Academy of Inventors, the highest professional distinction awarded to inventors. He also received the Pfizer Green Chemistry Award in Cancer Research, the Max and Minnie Tomerlin Voelcker Endowment for the CIDD, and was named UTSA Innovator of the Year in 2019, to name only a few. He holds 20 U.S. patents and 22 international patents, and his research has been funded through grants by such agencies as the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, and the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas.
McHardy has come a long way since freshman year at TLU, when he thought he’d be a business major. But he’s still connected to his alma mater. “I have given multiple chemistry seminars at TLU since my time at UTSA,” he says. “We recruit TLU chemistry students into our UTSA PhD program and I work closely with Dr. Michael Ruane to maintain TLU involvement in our Texas Undergraduate Research Symposiums we hold annually at UTSA.”
His advice to current students pursuing their studies in the field: “Pursue a PhD in graduate school!” he says. “The sub-disciplines in chemistry (organic, medicinal, inorganic, analytical, biochemistry, polymer chemistry, etc.) are becoming very focused on multi-disciplinary collaborative research. This gives students the opportunity to expand their knowledge outside of their specific disciplines and prepares them for career transitions to multiple industry areas and opportunities that encompass research across multiple disciplines.”
McHardy is living proof that a good start at TLU can lead to great things—and a better world.