Namandjé N. Bumpus

Namandjé N. Bumpus is an American pharmacologist who served as the Principal Deputy Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. She became interested in chemistry at a young age, even writing to the American Chemical Society while still in elementary school to ask about the kind of careers chemists can have.

She earned a B.A. in Biology from Occidental College, in Los Angeles, California, in 2003. At Occidental, she was introduced to research experiences in ecology, then she ventured into pharmacology through Charles Ross Summer Research Fellowship at the University of Michigan, during which she was mentored by Dr. Richard R. Neubig. She enjoyed the experience so much that she decided to return to the University of Michigan after graduating from Occidental College in order to pursue a PhD in pharmacology. Bumpus performed her thesis research in the laboratory of Dr. Paul F. Hollenberg, investigating how a naturally occurring mutation in CYP2B6 affects its ability to be inactivated by compounds known the inactivate the wild-type CYP2B6. She also looked into how naturally occurring variants could impact how patients cleared the antidepressant Bupropion, and the antiviral Efavirenz. and received Professorship in 2020.

She became Hopkins’ inaugural associate dean of institutional and student equity in 2015 and instituted mentoring programs to expand access to resources and opportunities. After holding that role for two years, in July 2017 she transitioned into a role as senior consulting strategist for Academic and Research Diversity, working with the chief diversity officer to develop and implement diversity and inclusion programs across Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Bumpus received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2016.

In July 2018, she was named as Associate Dean for Basic Research at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In this role, she serves as an advocate and liaison for basic science researchers working in clinical departments to help facilitate the combination of “basic research” which seeks to answer fundamental scientific questions and “translational research” that seeks to put those findings to use, for example in a clinical setting.

Research

A major thread of Bumpus' research is determining how antiviral drugs used to treat HIV-1 are metabolized and how genetic variations in drug-processing enzymes may impact these drugs' efficacy. Tenofovir is given in an inactive form – it has to be phosphorylated twice to become active, and this phosphorylation is carried out in two steps by separate kinases. Bumpus and her team identified which kinases do this and found that the enzymes responsible varied by cell type, so administration route (e.g. orally or topically) could affect how effectively the drug is processed. They also sequenced the genes of these kinases from different patients and found that some people have genetic variants in the kinases that may affect how effectively the drug is processed.

Bumpus has also researched nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors. Her lab was the first to publish the P450-catalyzed phase 1 and phase 2 metabolic pathways of two nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors, rilpivirine and etravirine and was first to characterize the metabolism of the nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor dapivirine.

Government career Bumpus became the Chief Scientist at the Food and Drug Administration in August 2022. Bumpus became a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in its Section on Pharmaceutical Sciences, in 2021. Division for Drug Metabolism Early Career Achievement Award by the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET) (2015) The Daily Record Leading Women Award (2017) Leon I. Goldberg Young Investigator Award from the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (2017)