PhD, Pharmaceutical Chemistry; B.S. Pharmacy,  University of Hamburg, Germany

I am a Molecular Pharmacologist with over 20 years of experience in small molecule drug discovery for many diseases including neurodegenerative disease, diabetes, cancer, and organ regeneration, with an emphasis on phenotypic screening. I have been an investigator in over 25 NIH sponsored research projects aimed at discovering small molecule inhibitors of a wide variety of challenging cellular drug targets and phenotypes. I helped establish a start-up company in Pittsburgh (ProlX Pharmaceuticals, Inc; now Seattle Genetics; NASDAQ: SGEN) where I served as Scientific Director from 1990-1993. I led the Bioinformation and Cell- Based Assay Core of an NIH Program Project (5P01 CA78039-10) and contributed significantly to the establishment of the University of Pittsburgh as one of the premier academic drug discovery centers using high-content screening. In 2005 I helped create the Pittsburgh Molecular Libraries Screening Center (PMLSC) where I served as Director of the HTS Core. As a senior faculty member of the University of Pittsburgh Drug Discovery Institute, I now lead the small organism discovery group and am the primary contact for collaborative discovery projects. Over the last 20 years a major interest of mine has been high-content imaging and analysis (HCI/HCA). My group completed several large scale high-content screens and developed multiple target-based and cellular assays, including an innovative cell motility assay with Platypus Technologies, LLC (ORISTM). Over the past 15 years I have been pioneering HCA of zebrafish larvae in drug discovery, including kidney and heart regeneration (R01HD053287, RC4DK090770, R01DK112652), vascular biology (American Heart Association 13GRNT16830049), and Parkinson’s disease (U Pitt Institute of Aging). To that end I have developed platform- , orientation-, and phenotype-independent image analysis methodology for transgenic zebrafish and complex cell culture systems, and am currently expanding HCS to organoids. As part of a UPDDI team I have secured a state-of-the art high-content reader (Opera Phenix Plus; NIH High End Instrumentation grant S10 OD025263).  

Selected Publications 

• Vogt A, Eicher SL, Myers TD, Hrizo SL, Vollmer LL, Meyer EM, Palladino MJ. A High-Content Screening Assay for Small Molecules That Stabilize Mutant Triose Phosphate Isomerase (TPI) as Treatments for TPI Deficiency. SLAS Discov. 2021;26(8):1029-39. Epub 2021/06/26. PubMed PMID: 34167376; PMCID: PMC8380696.https://doi.org/10.1177/24725552211018198 
•  Nmezi B, Vollmer LL, Shun TY, Gough A, Rolyan H, Liu F, Jia Y, Padiath QS, Vogt A. Development and Optimization of a High-Content Analysis Platform to Identify Suppressors of Lamin B1 Overexpression as a Therapeutic Strategy for Autosomal Dominant Leukodystrophy. SLAS Discov. 2020;25(8):939-49. Epub 2020/05/01. PubMed PMID: 32349647; PMCID: PMC7755098. https://doi.org/10.1177/2472555220915821. 
•  Sanker S, Cirio MC, Vollmer LL, Goldberg ND, McDermott LA, Hukriede NA, Vogt A. Development of high-content assays for kidney progenitor cell expansion in transgenic zebrafish. J Biomol Screen. 2013;18(10):1193-202. PMID: 23832868   PMCID: PMC3830658. 
•  Molina G#, Vogt A#, Bakan A#, Dai W, de Oliveira PQ, Znosko W, Smithgall TE, Bahar I, Lazo JS, Day BW, Tsang M. Zebrafish chemical screening reveals an inhibitor of Dusp6 that expands cardiac cell lineages. Nat Chem Biol. 2009;6(8):680-7. PMCID: PMC2771339. (# equal contribution)  PMID: 19578332   PMCID: PMC2771339