Ana Brown

Ana Koperniku Brown earned a BSc in Pharmacy in 2011 and an MSc in Pharmaceutical Chemistry in 2013 from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She began her PhD at UBC in 2013, developing synthetic methods for amide and C–C bond formation using N-silylated amines as key precursors. In the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, her amide bond work used bench-stable thioesters and vacuum filtration to simplify purification, reduce waste, and support green chemistry principles (Synthesis, 2019, 51, 1779–1790). This work reinforced the importance of step economy: shorter synthetic routes are often greener. At the Chemistry Department, she contributed experimentally to the zirconium-catalyzed C–C bond formation between N-silylated α-arylated amines and alkenes, building on Buchwald’s zirconium chemistry and emphasizing another type of economy, that is, atom economy. She also contributed intellectually to the design of heterocycles, including nicotine derivatives (Eur. J., 2021, 27, 6334–6339), and coined the idea for a unified framework for producing β-amino acids, described in her thesis on page 104.

From 2019 to 2022, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University, where she worked on correcting enzymopathies through manual screening, lead design, and in vitro evaluation, strengthening her expertise in drug design and discovery. She also mentored undergraduates on a COVID-19-related project to isolate and characterize IgY antibodies from egg yolks for potential prophylactic use against SARS-CoV-2. This first-time mentoring experience reinforced her view that education is an integral part of research.

As she pursues an independent career, her research focuses on rationally downsizing complex bioactive molecules to create smaller, more potent, and easier-to-synthesize compounds with targeted activity. Her initial focus is the vinca alkaloids.

In her teaching capacity at USF, she began in the Organic Chemistry labs and later transitioned to General Chemistry. She is the academic co-advisor for Narcare, a nonprofit addressing the opioid crisis on campus and in San Francisco and serves as the UBC Pharm Sci Alumni Ambassador for the San Francisco Bay Area.

• Drug design

• Drug discovery
• Chemical biology

• The University of British Columbia, PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences, 2019
• National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, MSc in Pharmaceutical Chemistry, 2013
• National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, BSc in Pharmacy, 2011

• Affiliate, Stanford University (2023-2025)
• Postdoctoral Scholar in Drug Discovery, Stanford University (2019-2022)

• The University of British Columbia Four-Year Fellowship, 2016
• The University of British Columbia NSERC CREATE SusSyn Fellow, 2015

• Konstantina Stavropoulou, Angeliki Kaimaki, Maria Nikolaou, Ana K. Brown, Andrew Tsotinis, Martic C. Taylor, John M. Kelly and Ioannis P. Papanastasiou, New Trypanosoma brucei acting derivatives incorporating 1-(4-phenyl)adamantane and 1-(4-phenoxyphenyl)adamantane, RSC Med. Chem., 2025, 16, 2441
• Ana Koperniku and Nicholas A. Meanwell, Tying the Knot with Lysine, Nat. Rev. Chem., 2024, 8, 235
• Ana Koperniku, A Series of Selective Events, Nat. Rev. Chem., 2021, 5, 674