勤慎论道 第一百二十七讲 金振东教授谈“From Marine Sponge to Novel Anticancer Agents: An Organic Chemist’s Quest to Conquer Cancer”

报告题目：From Marine Sponge to Novel Anticancer Agents: An Organic Chemist’s Quest to Conquer Cancer

报告人：金振东 教授 美国爱荷华大学（The University of Iowa）

报告时间：2023年6月2日 上午9:30-10:30

报告地点：仓前校区 勤园17-210

报告人简介：

    Dr. Zhendong Jin was born in Zhejiang province and grew up in Shanghai. After his undergraduate training in chemistry at the East China Normal University, he moved to the US and earned his PhD in organic synthesis under the guidance of the world-renown organic chemist Dr. Philip L. Fuchs from Purdue University in 1995. Supported by an NIH postdoctoral fellowship, he received postdoctoral training in Dr. K.C. Nicolaou’s laboratory at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. He started his independent academic career in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Iowa in 1997 and currently is a professor of medicinal and natural products chemistry in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Experimental Therapeutics.

        Dr. Jin is an accomplished organic/medicinal chemist who has developed novel synthetic methods that are widely used in organic synthesis and drug development. The Lemieux-Johnson-Jin oxidation (Jin protocol) is just one illustration of his contribution to the field of organic synthesis. His most significant breakthrough discovery is in the study of biologically important natural products. He is widely regarded as the world’s leading authority on two promising anticancer natural products OSW-1 and superstolide A. His groundbreaking work not only has solved the supply problems of these compounds, led the field in understanding their novel mechanisms of action, but more importantly, successfully advanced two potential first-in-class anticancer drug candidates to preclinical stages and two groups of novel payloads for antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) with limited funding in an academic setting. Dr. Jin is the receipt of the American Cancer Society Junior Faculty Award and four Inventor Awards from the University of Iowa Research Foundation.

报告摘要：

   Marine macrolides are of considerable interest because of their structural novelty, functional diversity and potent biological activity. Superstolides A and B, two marine macrolides, were isolated in minute amounts from the deep-water marine sponge Neosiphonia superstes. Both molecules exhibit potent antiproliferative effect against various cancer cell lines and represent a new chemotype of potent anticancer agents from marine source. However, the scarcity of these compounds has hampered the preclinical evaluation and pharmacological investigation of this group of structurally distinct and mechanistically unique natural products. The presentation will describe: 1) our synthetic efforts toward solving the supply problem of this group of fascinating anticancer marine natural products employing innovative synthetic strategies and new methodologies developed in Jin lab at the University of Iowa; 2) our biological evaluation and chemical biology investigation of designed analogs of superstolide A; and 3) our medicinal chemistry study that resulted in the discovery of several “late stage” drug candidates with the potential to be 1st-in-class anticancer agents. This presentation will show a journey of the transformation of a hard-core synthetic organic chemist to a medicinal chemist.