The Jung Group
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Jung Group News
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The Boss65 Symposium is rapidly approaching and a large number
of former Jung students are already signed up. If you are planning to attend, please register soon at the symposium
website: "http://boss65.chem.ucla.edu/index.php/about-boss65" so we can get an accurate number of attendees! See
you all in June!
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Paul Ornstein is leaving Eli Lilly after many years to accept a
position in academics. He will be an Associate Professor of Medicinal Chemistry (something he knows a lot about!)
in the College of Pharmacy at Roosevelt University in Schaumburg, IL, which is near O'Hare airport. Good luck, Paul!
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Ryan Quiroz has accepted the offer from Stanford and will be a new
grad student there this fall, possibly working for Paul Wender. Good luck, Ryan!
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Li Zheng, Gang Deng's wife, has joined the group as a postdoc. She is working
in Pharmacology on the dCK project, along with Jenn Murphy, and her lab is in the med school. Welcome, Zheng!
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A new postdoc, Brian Chamberlain, will join the group in May as the
senior researcher in the CNSI sponsored Bioscience Synthetic Chemistry core facility. He got his PhD with Charles
McKenna at USC. Welcome, Brian!
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Quentin Perron will soon start his new position as a research chemist
at Servier in Croissy, France, where he will get a chance to talk with the boss, who is a consultant there!
Chapeau et bonne chance (ou bon courage), Quentin!
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Bree Lybbert has accepted a position as an Assistant Professor
of Chemistry at the University of Minnesota at Morris. Now she just has to finish her research and write her thesis!
Good luck, Bree!
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Jennifer Murphy is now on a 4-month internship with Professor
Tobias Ritter at Harvard learning 18F fluorination techniques. Good luck, Jenn!
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Tim Dong finished his PhD in March and is now teaching Chem 14D at
UCLA. This fall he will be an Assistant Professor in Organic Chemistry in the W. M. Keck Science Department at
Claremont McKenna College. AND he just got married April 20th. Good luck, Tim!
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David Shia has joined the group as an undergraduate researcher.
He is the son of Haiji Xia, who got his PhD with the boss many years ago! Welcome, David.
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Mao Ye has accepted a position at Combi-Blocks in San Diego
and started there in early February. Good luck, Mao!
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Collin Regan has accepted a new position at BroadPharm in San Diego. He was
forced to move since Cylene Pharmaceuticals eliminated all its Research and development activities. Good luck, Collin.
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Raphäel Robiette and his wife
Marie are the proud parents of Antoine who was born in 2009. Congrats! Raphäel is an
F.R.S.-FNRS Research Fellow and Professor at the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium.
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Jonah Chang finished his PhD in January and is now at UC Irvine where he
a postdoc with Larry Overman. Good luck, Jonah!
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Gang Deng and his wife Li Zheng are proud to announce the birth of their
first child, a daughter named Shirley, born on December 21st, Gang's birthday. Welcome to the Jung group, Shirley!
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Two new grad students have joined the group, Courtney Roberts from William and
Mary and Daniel Sun from San Jose State. Welcome to the Jung group!
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The boss has returned from his sabbatical in Paris. While there
he gave many lectures, consulted, served on thesis committees, and even presented his course on
Heterocyclic Chemistry, but this time in French!
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Dongjo Chang was recently awarded a SEED grant for
trying to determine the mechanism of action of novel small molecules which are radiomitigators, namely
they counteract the negative effects of radiation. Way to go, Dongjo!
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Hiufung Chu and her husband Wilson are proud to announce the birth of their
first child, a son named Nathan Lok-Shen Chu Wong, born on December 1st. They have just moved to Boston where Wilson has
started his new position as an assistant professor in the biomedical engineering department at Boston University. Good luck!
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The current downsizing trend has hit many former group members hard, although
a few have managed to find good jobs. If anyone out there needs some extremely good experienced synthetic chemists, call the boss and he
can give you the names of several very good candidates!
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The dynamic duo of European postdocs have returned to Europe. Pierre
Koch is working with Prof. Christa Müller at the Pharmaceutical Institute in Bonn, Germany, while Quentin Perron is
actively interviewing for positions in both France and Switzerland. Good luck to both of you!
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Damian Allen has started a new position as an
equity research associate at Rodman & Renshaw in New York. Good luck, Damian!
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In early November, the phase 3 clinical trial for MDV3100 was halted
because the results were so positive. It may well become an approved drug for the treatment of castration-resistant
prostate cancer soon.
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Lynnie Lin has finished her PhD at UC San Diego with Emmanuel
Theodorakis and will start a postdoctoral position soon with Bill Fenical at Scripps. Good luck, Lynnie!
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Mihkail Guzaev was awarded a hard-to-get Dissertation
Year Fellowship for 2011-2012. Way to go, Mickey!
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Peng Cui has started a new position at
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals in Tarrytown, NY. Good luck, Peng.
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Adrian Huang has started her new position
as an Instructor in the Chemistry Department at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. Good
luck, Adrian!
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Some terrible news. Todd Blumenkopf, one of the first undergrad
researchers in the Jung group, passed away in late August from complications related to a recent surgery. He was
an incredibly upbeat and courageous guy and a wonderful friend. We will miss him!
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Two new postdocs have started working in the Jung group. Nikolai (Kolya)
Evdokimov, who got his PhD with Prof. Kornienko at New Mexico Tech, is working on putting 18F into
organic molecules. And Jean-Hugues Mirebeau, who did hid PhD with Prof. Jaouen at ENSCP in Paris, is
working on read-through compounds and imiquimod analogues. Welcome to you both!
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Luke Koroniak has obtained a permanent position at DSM in the Netherlands.
He is working in their Drug Delivery Division in application development. Good luck, Luke!
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Brent Smith has left Delaware for Texas. He has started a position with
Virbac Pharmaceuticals, a big player in Animal Health. Good luck, Brent!
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Jeremy and Angie Clemens are the proud parents of Zachary Andrew,
born 4/12/11. Both mom and son are doing great! As Jeremy said: "there goes the chemists only have girls rule." And
there must be something in the water in San Diego and especially at Vertex since both Jeremy and Joe Pontillo had
sons within about a month (a pregnancy virus on the loose?). Seriously, congrats Jeremy and Angie!
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Jesus Cordova has taken a job as a research chemist at SIGNA, Inc., a
pharmaceutical company in Toluca, Mexico, where he will learn medicinal chemistry. Good luck, Jesus!
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The boss is scheduled to present a lecture at the 2011 Stauffer Symposium at USC in April.
Since the theme of the symposium is drug discovery, he will describe the work that led to MDV3100 and ARN509. Then in mid-May,
he will present a Plenary Lecture on the same topic at the First Mexican Meeting on Pure and Applied Chemistry in Mexico City. Finally he
is invited to give a seminar at the 52nd GECO (Groupe d'Etude de Chimie Organique) in Brittany this August.
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Ramin Salehi-Rad wrote to say that he has decided to do his residency in Internal
Medicine at UCLA. It's a 3-year general internist training, after which he can practice medicine or continue doing research in a
related field, e.g., Hematology/Oncology. Good luck, Dr. Ramin!
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Joe and Debbie Pontillo are the proud parents of Ethan Matthew,
born 3/11/11. His big sister Natasha is slightly jealous - she turns 4 on 3/23/11. Joe is still working as a
research chemist at Vertex in San Diego, which is doing very well with a likely approval of telaprevir for HCV.
The boss still consult there. Congratulations, Joe and Debbie!
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Jennifer Murphy has started a postdoc in Molecular and Medical
Pharmacology in the Med School here at UCLA. She is developing ways to make fluorinated compounds, eventually for PET
imaging and/or therapeutics. Congrats, Jenn!
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Dawei Yue, who worked on the PEIPC project, called the boss recently and
said that he is now the Associate Director of Med Chem at Crown Bioscience (Taicang) in Jiangsu, China.
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Haiji Xia stopped by on Saturday (Bruins Day) to see his old
boss. His son David has been accepted at UCLA and is interested in chemistry so he wanted to find out
whether I might be able to teach him organic chemistry! The rest of the family - Jesse, Rachel, and Michael - are
also doing well. Haiji is still working for ChemDiv in San Diego.
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Several group members presented posters or gave talks at the
ACS meeting in Anaheim a few weeks ago. The boss talked at the Industrial Chemistry Award Symposium, which was in
honor of John Lowe, the first ever PhD from our group. Congratulations John!
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The boss just returned from his semiannual trip to France, where he
managed to work a lot, giving one seminar and doing 4 days consulting. He added a new consulting gig, this time at Diverchim,
which is a French CRO just north of Paris.
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Damian Allen is finishing his Master's course in Finance at Claremont College and
is looking for a summer internship. Any of you rich ex-Jung folks looking for a bright business type, give Damian a call!
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Felix Perez did his CBI-mandated internship at Amgen this summer and
worked with Ana Minatti on a project to improve the yields of Buchwald couplings of halopyridines. The work was so
successful that they just published the results in Org. Letts. Congrats, Felix!
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Jake and Victoria Wasserman are the proud parents of Caleb David,
born 12/18/10. He seems to resemble Jake in the photos. Jake is still working as a patent lawyer at Pfizer in
Cambridge, MA. The boss will be visiting him (and Adrian Huang and Andreas Maderna) in early March for a
seminar and consulting visit. Congratulations, Jake and Victoria!
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Tim Dong has been named the new Jung group leader replacing Jenn who has
gotten her PhD. Good luck, Tim!
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A new visiting scholar has joined the group, Frank Stappenbeck,
who got his PhD with Jim White at Oregon State and then postdoced with Larry Overman. He has worked for several
biotechs and pharma companies (Elan, ICOS, Fate Therapeutics) before coming to our group. Welcome, Frank!
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The boss has just co-founded another pharmaceutical company,
MAX BioPharma, which has two drug development goals - bone formation (for fracture healing and osteoporosis)
and anticancer activity (pancreatic cancer and osteosarcoma and others). Good luck, boss!
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The boss' other company, Aragon Pharmaceutical, filed an IND
for their first drug, ARN-509, and it started phase 1-2 clinical trials for castration-resistant prostate
cancer in August 2010. Let's hope they go well and the drug can someday help men suffering with that disease!
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The boss wants to thank everyone for their
kindness and expressions of support after the quite unexpected death of his mom at the age of 96 on
January 2, 2011.
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Two new postdocs have arrived, Dong-Jo Chang from
Prof. Young-Ger Suh's group at Seoul National University in the College of Pharmacy (he'll work on
the radiomitigation project) and Gang Deng from Prof. David Lee's group at Harvard Medical School (his project
is a new breast cancer project on novel ER antagonists). Welcome to you both!
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After several very productive years in the group,
Dongwon Yoo has gone back to Korea where he is a research professor affiliated with Prof. Jinwoo Cheon
in Nanomedicine at Yonsei Univeristy. We wish you all the best, Dongwon!
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On Parents' Weekend at UCLA, Suki Tamura and
George Geller came back to visit the Boss. Their son, Matthew, is a sophomore here majoring in
Microbiology. He's taking organic chemistry but, unfortunately, not from the Boss! It was good
seeing Suki and George again! Suki is still at Watson Pharmaceuticals in Corona.
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KhanhLinh Nguyen and Rob Epple announce the
arrival of their first child, a son named Julian Tuan Epple. Mom and son are both doing well.
Congratulations, KhanhLinh and Rob!
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Pierre Koch just returned from a quick trip to
Germany, where he received the Merck Promotion Prize for the best PhD thesis at the University of
Tübingen. He also was just informed that he has received the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinshaft)
Fellowship to do postdoctoral work with the Boss here at UCLA. A double round of applause for Pierre!
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Quentin Perron has joined the group as
a Swiss NSF Postdoc. He got his PhD from Alex Alexakis, at the University of Geneva,
working on novel metal-catalyzed processes. He is working on the total synthesis of Brasilicardin A.
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Pascale Sztajnbok wrote recently to say
that she has returned from a long stay in Indonesia where she worked in the water industry, mainly for the
Indonesian Ministry of Health. She just got a Masters degree in translation in France and
is "looking for gainful employment" as they say. She has two sons, 12 & 10 years old.
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I learned some very sad news recently.
Guillermo (Will) Perdomo passed away of brain cancer this summer. He had worked at Tennessee Eastman
for several years. He was the first undergraduate to work with me. We wish his family all the best.
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Astellas and Medivation just announced that they
are starting a second phase 3 clinical trial of MDV3100, the boss' prostate cancer drug.
This trial is for chemo-naive patients, those who have not yet had significant
chemotherapy and who are therefore much earlier in their disease.
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The boss gave the Staff Research Seminar in the
Department on Friday, October 8th. This is a new seminar program to let the staff of the department know
what type of work is going on here. His title was: "What an Organic Chemist can do to Treat Prostate Cancer."
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Becca Lui has finished her PhD research and
submitted her thesis. She has started working as a research chemist at Chemocentryx in Mountain
View, CA, where she has joined Hiufung Chu. Good luck, Becca!
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Pierre Koch, who got his PhD with Stefan Laufer in
medicinal chemistry at the University of Tübingen working on, among other things, MAP Kinase inhbitiors,
has joined the group and will do some carbohydrate synthesis related to the sugars in brasilicardin A.
Welcome, Pierre!
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Dongwon Yoo has decided to take a job with Prof.
Jinwoo Cheon at Yonsei University in Korea (a former postdoc with Jeff Zink). So after almost 5 years
in the Jung group, he is heading back home! He will work on projects involving the use of
nanotechnology in medicine. But first he has to finish rhodexin A! Seriously, good luck, Dongwon!
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Alex Blum, Roberto and Trish's son, came by to visit
the boss. He finished his degree at Duke and is now working in San Francisco. Boy, are we getting old!
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Jennifer Murphy and her long-time boyfriend Alex
tied the knot on September 17th. Good luck to both of you!
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On the boss' recent trip to France, he had
lunch with Père Denis Jachiet, his former postdoc who is now a priest in Paris. Denis is the
pastor at St. Séverin, a beautiful old church in the heart of the Latin Quarter and is doing
very well. We wish you all the best, Denis!
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The boss also had lunch in Paris (doesn't he ever
work there!) with his former postdoc Franck Slowinski and his wife Candice Botuha. Franck is still working at Sanofi-Aventis
abd is trying to find a way to do joint research wioth the boss. Candice is a CNRS Maître de Conférence
with Serge Thorimbert in Paris. They have two sons, Gael and Ewen.
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The boss presented an invited lecture at the 14th
International Congress on Hormonal Steroids and Hormones and Cancer in Edinburgh. He gave the latest
update on MDV3100 and the new antiandrogen, ARN509.
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The group had a great picnic at the UCLA Rec Center on
Saturday, August 28. There was delicious food from everyone and a few old-timers - Ramin and Damian -
even showed up to help take care of any excess food! Great fun!
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The Jung group was well represented at the recent
ACS meeting in Boston, where three postdocs gave posters on their work (Dongwon, Woogie, and Wei) and
the boss went out to fine dinners every night!
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Mao Ye, who got his PhD from Oliver
Reiser in Regensburg, Germany, and then had a series of postdocs in the States, most
recently with Marcia Dawson at the Sanford-Burnham Institute in San Diego, has joined
the group as the assistant director of the Bioscience Synthetic Chemistry Core Facility
replacing Xiao-lu Cai, who has gone back to China. Welcome, Mao!
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Luke Koroniak wrote to say that he has landed a
temporary position in drug delivery at DSM, where Iwona works, in Maastritch, Netherlands. Maybe he
was prescient in leaving Abraxis since that has now been sold to Celgene! Good luck, Luke!
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John Rohloff has started several new positions!
He is the Director of Specialty Chemistry at Somalogic (at the old NeXstar site in Boulder)
while also being the Vice-President of Chemistry for Crestone (a new startup which bought the
antibacterial R&D programs from Replidyne when it closed). And he plays music almost every weekend
with several groups but mostly the Ariel Fletcher Band. Keep on trucking (and plucking), John!
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Jake Wasserman has left Foley Hoag law firm in Boston
and is now Patent Counsel for Pfizer in Cambridge (the old Wyeth site). Now if only the boss can
convince the folks there to bring him back as a consultant, he'd be able to keep up with Jake
(and Adrian Huang) in person! Good luck, Jake!
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Andreas Maderna, who is now a group leader at
Pfizer in Groton, has arranged for the boss to visit and give a seminar and do some consulting.
That would make Andreas 3 for 3, namely, three companies all with the Boss consulting, although the last two
- Valeant and Wyeth - didn't pan out so well long term!
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Yue Xu and his wife, Hui Juan, and their boys, Joseph
and Michael (gee, I like that name) stopped by recently. Yue has just taken the California bar exam
after studying law at U San Francisco and will find out if he passed soon. She is working for San Disk
and they still live in Fremont.
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Rob Tinder has accepted a new position as
a Principal Scientist in chemical synthesis at Roche in Nutley. He will work on developing
new technologies, especially scale-up and continuous processing. Good luck, Rob!
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The boss bumped into Angel Kim, now Mrs.
Brandon Murakami, at LAX. He is a prof at Rhode Island College in Providence and she will
be starting a new job at Brown. They have two adorable children, a daughter Akiko (KiKi)
and a son Akiyoshi.
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Gladys Completo, who got her PhD with
Todd Lowary at Alberta and then was a postdoc with Jim Paulson at Scripps, has started
doing some non-carbohydrate chemistry for a change here as a postdoc. She is replacing
Jin-Mo Ku who is back in Korea. Welcome, Gladys.
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The boss gave a seminar to MDs at the West LA Veterans
Administratiopn hospital in their Endocrine Grand Rounds seminar program. His title was: "Rational
Drug Design for the Treatment of Castration Resistant Prostate Cancer."
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Manon Chaumontet has started a new job
at the small biotech company, Diverchim, in a suburb north of Paris. She reports that she
is working on heterocyclic chemistry (don't I always stress how important that is!) and
some steroid chemistry. Bonne chance et bon courage, Manon!
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Dave Spurgeon reports that,
after many years of teaching organic chemistry at the University of Arizona, he
has accepted a position with McGraw-Hill as the Director of Digital Content for the
Physical Sciences and is moving from Tucson to Dubuque, Iowa. Good luck, Dave.
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Rich Brown called recently to say
hi. He is now working for Life Technologies which was born 1 1/2 years ago
by the merger of Applied Biosystems and Invitrogen. He is still in Foster City!
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Felix Perez is now carrying out a
research internship at Amgen in Medicinal Chemistry as part of his CBI Traineeship. He had a
chance to have lunch with the Boss and hear him give his seminar at Amgen in July. Come back
stronger, Felix!
Jin-Mo Ku has accepted a position
at the Institute of Science and Technology Promotion in Gyeonggi Korea, and left the group on
July 1st. Good luck, Jin-Mo!
Jonah Chang attended the ACS Graduate Research
Symposium this summer in Boston. He described his total synthesis of fawcettimine which was
published in Org. Lett. It even garnered some prime chem blog space. Way to go, Jonah!
I learned some very sad news recently.
Jim Hudspeth passed away of brain cancer nearly a year ago at the UCLA Medical Center.
He had worked for years at Seres (now PCAS-Nanosyn) in Santa Rosa. In January 2008,
completely without warning, a brain tumor was discovered. We wish his family all
the best.
Dongwon Yoo was honored as the
recipient of one of the prestigious MBI Postdoctoral Recognition Awards, which he
received from the boss at the MBI Postdoctoral Award ceremony on May 5th. Congrats,
Dongwon!
After more than 3 ½ years
in the Jung group, Xiaolu Cai has decided to return to Beijing, China, where
his wife has found a position. The only postdoc ever in the Bioscience Synthetic
Chemistry Core Facility, Xiaolu worked on dozens of projects in his time here.
We wish Xiaolu all the best!
Jamie Im, now doing a
postdoc with Neil Garg, has accepted a position with Ironwood Pharmaceuticals
in Cambridge, MA. Good luck, Jamie!
The boss just
returned from his annual spring visit to Europe. This time, in addition
to his usual consulting gigs at ORIL and Servier, he also gave a
seminar and consulted at J&J Pharmaceutical in Beerse, Belgium, and
gave a seminar and was on a PhD thesis defense at the University of
Geneva.
Mardi Gras 2010 was
not forgotten in the Jung group, with 2 King Cakes to eat and beads and
doubloons to catch for group meeting on Tuesday, 2/16/10. And the boss
played New Orleans Mardi Gras music as well.
As anyone who has seen the boss recently realizes (he wears the T-shirt
all the time!), he realized a dream by flying to Miami to watch his
beloved Saints win the Super Bowl. So if when walking around the
building, you hear the chant "Who Dat say they gonna beat them Saints,"
it's likely coming from him!
The closing of most of the Wyeth research facilities by Pfizer has been
announced and all 4 of the ex-Jung members are okay. Andreas Maderna
has
accepted a group leader position at Pfizer, Groton, while Adrian Huang
was retained at the Pfizer, Cambridge, site (the old Wyeth site).
Jeremy Clemens was offered a position at that site as well but decided
to "go West" and has just started at Vertex in San Diego (where the
boss
consults). Rob Tinder decided not to stay at the new company and is
looking at several intriguing opportunities
elsewhere. The only "casualty" is the boss, since after more
than 20 years of consulting at all the Wyeth sites, he is no longer
going to consult with the chemists he has come to know well over the
years (unless Andreas and Adrian work hard to convince the Pfizer folks
that they can't live without him!). We wish everyone all the best!
Felix Perez was
awarded one of the few Third Year Foote Fellowships! Congrats, Felix!
The
boss' article with Benhur Lee (and Tinghu Zhang) came out in PNAS and
was picked up by a few news magazines because it reports a
broad-spectrum antiviral, which is relatively rare. Even Popular
Science cited it! Check it out at:
<http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-02/lj001-acts-antibiotics-viruses>.
Wei Zhong, who got
his PhD doing carbohydrate chemistry with Geert-Jan Boons in Georgia
and then was a postdoc with Dan Little at UCSB working on three
different projects, has joined the group to replace Forrest. He is now
working on a new synthesis of PEIPC based on the route that Forrest
developed. Welcome, Wei!
Forrest Arp has started his new position as a Research Chemist at
Abraxis in Marina del Rey (replacing Luke Koroniak who has moved to the
Netherlands!). Forrest (and Abraxis) will soon move to new labs in
Costa Mesa in the old Valeant space. Good luck, Forrest!
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!
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