Rate My Professor Carla Coste-Sanchez

Carla Coste-Sanchez serves as Assistant Professor of the Practice in the Department of Chemistry at Wesleyan University. She joined the institution as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry in 2021 before assuming her current position. Coste-Sanchez holds a B.S. degree in Chemistry from the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras and a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her doctoral research focused on developing an orally available chelating agent for the decorporation of different metals. Following her Ph.D., she completed a one-year postdoctoral fellowship in the Center for Innovative Pharmacy and Experimental Research (CIPhER) at UNC Chapel Hill. During her graduate studies, she was awarded the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program.

Her research has centered on metallo-pharmaceuticals, including the characterization of solid-state structures of metal-binding small molecules and investigations into strategies for binding and removing excess metal ions from living systems. Key publications include "Impact of chelation timing on gadolinium deposition in rats after contrast administration" (Magnetic Resonance Imaging, 2018, co-authored with John P. Prybylski and Michael Jay) and "Solid-State Characterization of Three Polymorphs of an Orally Available Analog of Diethylenetriaminepentaacetic Acid" (co-authored with Arjun Kalra and others). In 2026, she contributed to "Cell Death Induced by Homoisoflavonoid Brazilin and Its Semisynthetic Derivatives on MDA-MB-231 and MCF7 Breast Cancer Cell Lines" (ACS Omega, co-authored with Miriam Zuñiga-Eulogio, Teresita Padilla-Benavides, Napoleón Navarro-Tito, and others), which examined the proapoptotic activity of brazilin derivatives in breast cancer cell lines. Coste-Sanchez has also made contributions to the science education literature. At Wesleyan, she teaches laboratory courses including Intermediate Chemistry Laboratory and Organic Chemistry Laboratory and participates in the Center for Prison Education program.