Two Jung group
members received major awards at the Department's Award Ceremony this
past Monday. Bree Lybbert received a Departmental Excellence in
Teaching Award and Felix Perez was awarded the Excellence in Second
Year Academics and Research for Organic Chemistry. Way to go, Bree and
Felix!
Also the boss recieved the 2009 Herbert Newby McCoy Award at the same
ceremony for his research on the castration resistant prostate cancer
drug.
It was just announced that Astellas Inc. in Japan has concluded a deal
with Medivation to jointly develop MDV3100, Dongwon's and the boss'
prostate cancer drug. The deal was for $760M, but unfortunately Dongwon
and the boss don't get much of that! But it does mean that the drug
will be able to go to the end of the pivotal phase 3 clinical trials
which started a month ago!
I have just learned
some very sad news. Mark Lyster passed away Wednesday, 10/21/09. He had
suffered another stroke a few weeks ago and now has transitioned to the
next life. We all wish Laura and their sons all the best.
Rudi
Marquez and his wife Amber recently had a son, Hamish Alexander (how
Scottish), to join their daughter Iona.
All are doing well. Rudi is the Ian Sword Lecturer of Bioorganic
Chemistry at WestCHEM at the University of Glasgow.
Tsvetelina Lazarova
wrote recently to say that her industrial grant to the NSF was funded. Her company, Medchem
Partners, is doing well. Now she owes the boss a good dinner for
writing the letter of support!
Luke and Iwona
Koroniak and their kids are moving to the Netherlands where Iwona has
landed a great job with DSM, an extremely good life and materials
science company in Maastricht. Good luck, guys!
Dongwon
has been able to make the diacetate of the aglycone of rhodexin A and
needs only to cleave the acetates and attach the L-rhamnose to finish
the total synthesis. Good luck!
The
boss spoke at the inaugural Abraxis-CNSI Symposium on the work that
Abraxis has funded, namely the total synthesis of Brasilicardin A and
its analogues.
The
compound that the boss developed for castration resistant prostate
cancer with Dr. Charles Sawyers - RD162' now renamed MDV3100 - has now
begun
the pivotal phase 3 clinical trials. Check
out the recent Science
article that describes this research.
UCLA
has funded the grant for the Bioscience Synthetic
Chemistry Core Facility for a fourth year. It involves research to help
biologists and MDs in various areas
of Med Chem, e.g., analogue design and synthesis, SAR, etc. Xiaolu Cai
is the researcher in the lab! And it has now become part of the UCLA
Molecular Sciences Screening Resource (MSSR) in the CNSI.
Jenn
Murphy has risen to the post of Jung group leader replacing Damian
Allen!
Mehrak Kiankarimi is
now working for the boss in a way, namely she has been hired by Aragon
(the boss' new company) to do some development activities: timeline and
resource management, outsourcing and the like. Good luck!
The
boss has just founded a company called Aragon Pharmaceuticals, Inc., in
San Diego, along with Charles Sawyers and Rich Heyman. The company will
focus on hormone receptor driven cancers and is working actively on
breast cancer, among others.
Ting-Hu
Zhang finished the synthesis of the model for fusidic acid via a
transannular Dies-Alder addition (TADA) and Rebecca Lui was able to get
the material to crystallize to prove the structure by x-ray. Ken Houk
and Osvaldo Guttierez carried out calculations to explain why the
lactone did not cyclize when the corresponding cyclic ether did! A
paper has been submitted on this research.
Michael
Trzoss and Lynnie Lin welcomed their daughter, Nathalie, on August
28th! The boss gets to see Michael every 3 months at Trius, where he is
their chief consultant!
Martha
de la Rosa has landed a new job with GSK's Antiviral Research unit in
Research Triangle Park, NC, where she will rejoin her old boss Zhi
Hong. And she will still have to listen to her really old boss who is
their synthetic consultant.
John
Lowe, the first Jung PhD ever, has left Pfizer Groton and started his
own consulting service, JL3Pharma LLC. Good luck, John.
A
new postdoc just joined the group, Ji-Hye Lee, from the Research
Institute of Pharmaceutical
Sciences of Seoul National University. She is
working on the antiviral project with Dr. Benhur Lee, the
project that Ting-Hu Zhang started.
Welcome!
Collin
Regan finished his PhD and is now working as a Senior Scientist at
Cylene Pharmaceutical in San Diego. He still gets to listen to his
boss' good idea since he's a consultant there. Good Luck.
KhanhLinh
Nguyen also finished her PhD and is the Patent Liaison for Medicinal
Chemistry at Isis Pharmaceuticals in Carlsbad, where the boss also
consults. Way to go, KL!
Ramin
Salehi-Rad has finished his thesis and the total synthesis
of Auripyrone A, which is now published in Angew. Chemie! He has
started med school (that's what you do
as an
MD-PhD)! Good luck.
Grazia
Piizzi and Sauro Liberatore are the proud parents of a second beautiful
daughter, Fiorenza, who joins Giulia in their family. They have moved
to Switzerland where Grazia has a great job with Novartis in Basel and
Sauro has a super job in Baden. Buon viaggio! Viel Glück!
Pablo
Davidov received his MBA from the U of Miami and is now the Director of
Research Administration in the Department of Clinical Research at the
Cleveland Clinic in Weston, Florida. He and Verka are the proud parents
of two fine boys, Alex (Aleko), 5 years old, and Axel, 7 months old.
Jesus
Cordova finished the total synthesis of kellermanoldione (out in Org.
Lett.) and has started a new total synthesis project.
Congrats!
Jonah
Chang has finished a formal total synthesis of fawcettimine via a novel
rearrangement as the key step. He's still studying the stereochemistry
of the rearrangement but a manuscript is in the works! Kudos!
The
boss spoke at the ZaCh Systems Symposium on Organic Synthesis in Paris
in May. He also chaired the afternoon session and got to introduce the
head of the Zambon group, Elena Zambon. The highlight was the private
guided tour of the Musée d'Orsay and dinner in the museum.
Ting-Hu
Zhang has joined the group of Professor Gray at Harvard Medical School
as a Postdoctoral
Associate and so now can live again with his wife and son! Good luck!
Manon
Chaumontet joined the group in January and is working on a major total
synthesis project. She got her PhD with Olivier Baudoin at the Institut
de Chimie des Substances Naturelles (ICSN) in Gif-sur-Yvette. She has a
fellowship from the Foundation de Recherche Medicale. Bienvenue!
Sun-Joon
Min is now working as a Senior Scientist at the Chemoinformatics Center
of the Life Science Division in the Korea Institute of Sceince and
Technology (KIST) in Seoul, where his research is focused on medicinal
chemistry. And his wife got a job at Samsung Cheil Industries in Seoul
so they are together again!
Dongwon
Yoo continues to make great progress on two projects, the total
synthesis of tedanolide and the total synthesis of rhodexin A!
Tax
Georgiadis is now the Director of the Synthetic Core Facility at UIPUI
in Indianapolis. Congrats!
Jeremy
and Angie Clemens are now husband and wife, having recently tied the
knot. They are both doing well, still working for Wyeth
Research in Pearl River, NY. Congrats!
Two
new postdocs have now joined the group: Sung Wook
(Woogie) Yi, from Mark McLaughlin's group (and before that Kyung Jung)
at the University of South Florida and Forrest Arp from
Greg Fu's
group at MIT (and before that with Jon Sessler at Texas). Forrest is
working on the PEIPC
project while Woogie is working on the Sortase A inhibitor project.
Welcome to both of you!
The
boss hit the trifecta last year, with plenary lectures at the
national meetings
of the three
North American Chemical Societies. He spoke at the Canadian meeting in
Edmonton in May, the ACS meeting in Philly in August
(check out the C&E News report),
and then at the Mexican meeting in Tijuana in September. Now that's a
NAFTA year!
The
boss has expanded this European consulting by adding ZaCh System (a
merger of Zambon Chimia and PPG-Sipsy) and consulted in September at
their labs outside Verona, Italy. Now he has the chance to learn
a little Italian (and eat some great Italian food and drink some great
Italian wines)!
Peng
Cui has started his new position with Albany Molecular
Research (AMRI) in
Albany, NY, and reports that things are going well there. Good luck,
Peng!
The
boss was a featured speaker at the Chemical Insights into
Biological Processes Symposium at the new Center for Cancer Research at
the NCI in August. He also spoke at the symposium to honor Victor
Marquez of the NCI at the ACS meeting in Philadelphia.
Feliz
Perez is the latest in a list of Jung group members that have
been awarded a Chemistry-Biology
Interface Traineeship at UCLA, joining
Jennifer and Tim as Jung group trainees. Mikhail Guzaev was offered an
Associate Traineeship as well. And Ramin has finally relinquished his
Traineeship after 3 years. Way to go, guys!
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