Welcome to this MedChemComm themed issue aimed at displaying the top research that is currently being done by some of the emerging investigators within the medicinal chemistry field. This is the second issue of this type for the journal and this particular issue focuses specifically on those from the Asia-Pacific region. This Profile article offers a brief insight into these up and coming researchers. We congratulate them and their teams on their achievements to date and wish them continued success for the future.
Midori A. Arai
Midori A. Arai was born in Japan in 1972. She received her PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Tokyo, Japan, in 2000 (Prof. Masakatsu Shibasaki). She performed postdoctal studies with Prof. Hiroaki Sasai (Osaka Univ., 2000–2003), Prof. Stuart L. Schreiber (Harvard Univ., 2001–2002) and Dr. Yukishige Ito (RIKEN, 2003–2004). In 2004 she joined Teikyo University as an Assistant Professor. She was appointed to her current position as an Associate Professor at Chiba University in 2006. She was a visiting Associate Professor of Institute for Chemical Research, Kyoto University (2010–2011). Her current research interests are natural products chemistry, chemical biology and development of signalling inhibitors and neural stem cells activators.
Matthew Chang
Matthew Chang was born in South Korea in 1975. He received his PhD in Biochemical Engineering from the University of Maryland, USA, in 2003, and BS in Chemical Engineering from Seoul National University, South Korea, in 1998. In 2007 he joined Nanyang Technological University, Singapore as Assistant Professor. Currently, he is Associate Professor in Biochemistry in the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine and in the Synthetic Biology Research Program at the National University of Singapore. His current research interests are synthetic biology of microbial systems, with particular emphasis on the development of synthetic microbes that perform programmable functions for engineering applications.
Matthew Paul Gleeson
Matthew Paul Gleeson was born in Ireland in 1978. He received his PhD in Chemistry from University of Manchester, UK, in 2003. He subsequently joined AstraZeneca pharmaceuticals as a post-doctoral research fellow. In 2005 he moved to GlaxoSmithKline pharmaceuticals to work as a computational chemist. In 2009 he moved to Kasetsart University in Thailand to pursue an academic role. His current research interests are varied, ranging from cheminformatics and theoretical simulations of enzyme reactivity to the design and synthesis of molecules to treat diseases of the developing world.
Minyong Li
Minyong Li was born in China in 1976. He received his PhD in medicinal chemistry from China Pharmaceutical University, China, in 2005. He began his academic career in 2005 with Dr Binghe Wang at the Department of Chemistry, Georgia State University, as a postdoctoral research associate. From 2007 to 2009 he was a research assistant professor at the Department of Chemistry, Georgia State University. Since 2009 he has been a professor at the School of Pharmacy, Shandong University. His current research interests are in the general areas of medicinal chemistry and chemical biology.
Shinya Oishi
Shinya Oishi was born in Japan in 1976. He received his PhD in pharmaceutical sciences from Kyoto University under the direction of Professor Nobutaka Fujii in 2003. He then studied as a JSPS postdoctoral fellow under the supervision of Dr Terrence R. Burke, Jr. at the National Cancer Institute, NIH, USA. In 2004 he joined the Center for Drug Discovery at the University of Shizuoka as a lecturer. Currently he is a senior lecturer at the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Kyoto University. His current research interests are directed at medicinal chemistry of peptides and peptidomimetics as well as the development of drug discovery technologies.
Masahiro Ono
Masahiro Ono graduated from Kyoto University in 1995. He received his PhD in 2001 from Kyoto University under the supervision of Professor Hideo Saji. He joined Nagasaki University under the supervision of Professor Morio Nakayama as an assistant professor in 2001. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Professor Hank F. Kung at the University of Pennsylvania for one and a half years from 2001. He returned to Kyoto University as an associate professor in 2007. He received the Japanese Society of Nuclear Medicine Award for Young Scientists in 2008 and the Pharmaceutical Society of Japan Award for Young Scientists in 2009. His research interests include radiopharmaceutical chemistry and molecular imaging.
Richard Payne
Richard Payne was born in Christchurch, New Zealand. He graduated from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, in 2002. In 2003 he was awarded a Gates Scholarship to undertake his PhD at the University of Cambridge, where he graduated with a PhD in 2006. After 18 months as a Lindemann Fellow at The Scripps Research Institute (La Jolla) he began his independent career (in January 2008) as a Lecturer in Organic Chemistry and Chemical Biology at The University of Sydney. Since 2015 he has been a Professor of Organic Chemistry and Chemical Biology and Australian Research Council Future Fellow at the University of Sydney. Professor Payne's research focuses on utilising the power of synthetic organic chemistry to interrogate biological systems and address problems of medical significance. He has made significant breakthroughs in the development of new methods for the chemical synthesis of biologically active modified proteins and in the discovery of novel lead compounds in the area of tuberculosis and malaria drug discovery. As a result of his research endeavours, he has been the recipient of several prestigious national awards.
Brad Sleebs
Brad Sleebs was born in Australia in 1977. He received his PhD in Organic Chemistry from La Trobe University, Australia, in 2005. In 2005 he joined the medicinal chemistry group at The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute as a postdoctoral scientist. In 2008 he was appointed Senior Research Officer in the Chemical Biology Division at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute. His research includes development of anxiolytics, kinase inhibitors, DNA intercalators and inhibitors of the BH3 family of proteins involved in apoptosis. His current research focuses on the infectious disease field, namely developing probe molecules to better understand biological processes that are essential to the malaria parasite and to the human immunodeficiency virus.
Takayoshi Suzuki
Takayoshi Suzuki was born in Japan in 1972. He received his PhD from the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, the University of Tokyo, in 2005. He joined the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Nagoya City University, as an assistant professor (2003–2009) and lecturer (2009–2011). He spent one year as a visiting investigator at The Scripps Research Institute, California (Prof. M. G. Finn) (2007–2008). He has worked as a full professor at the Graduate School of Medical Science, Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine (2011 to present). His research interests are in the area of medicinal chemistry and bioorganic chemistry, including epigenetic drugs, target-guided synthesis of enzyme inhibitors, and noncovalent interactions between ligands and proteins.
Katsunori Tanaka
Katsunori Tanaka was born in 1973 in Nara, Japan. He received his BS (1996) and PhD (2002) from Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan, under the direction of Professor Shigeo Katsumura. After a post-doc with Professor Koji Nakanishi at Columbia University, New York (2002–2005), he was appointed as an Assistant Professor in Osaka University, Japan (Professor Koichi Fukase). In 2012 he moved to RIKEN to direct his own lab (Biofunctional Synthetic Chemistry Laboratory) as an Associate Chief Scientist. In 2014 he was also appointed as a Professor in Kazan Federal University, Russia, to direct his 2nd RIKEN-Kazan joint lab (Biofunctional Chemistry Laboratory). His research interests include exploring new synthetic methods for total synthesis (either in flask, microfluidics, live cells, or animals), configurational analysis, biological evaluation, molecular imaging, and molecular recognition of natural products.
Xinjing Tang
Xinjing Tang was born in China in 1976. He received his PhD in Chemistry from the Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2002 and further continued his postdoctoral research at University of Pennsylvanian in 2003. In 2009 he joined Peking University as principal investigator and started his independent research. His current research interests are: photomodulation of nucleic acid functions, fluorescent oligonucleotide probes, nanomaterials and photosensitive drug delivery systems.
Xiaojian Wang
Xiaojian Wang (born 1982 in Hefei, Anhui Province), Associate Professor of the Department of Medicinal Chemistry of Institute of Materia Medica, Peking Union Medical College and Chinese Academy of Medical sciences, received his BS degree (major pharmacy) from China Pharmaceutical University in 2005, and obtained his PhD degree in medicinal chemistry from China Pharmaceutical University in 2010. He became an assistant professor at the Institute of Materia Medica, Peking Union Medical College and Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in 2010, and promoted to an associate professor three years later. His current research interests include the design, synthesis and biological evaluation of potential medicinal agents targeted at channels, enzymes and receptors, as well as synthetic methodology research.
Kenji Watanabe
Kenji Watanabe received his PhD in 2000 in biological chemistry from Hokkaido University, Japan. His postdoctoral fellowships included a year at University of Wisconsin-Madison and a two-year appointment at Stanford University. In 2003 he returned to Hokkaido University as an assistant professor. In 2004 he joined the department of pharmaceutical sciences at University of Southern California as a research assistant professor. In 2008 he received a tenure-track position at Okayama University being promoted to associate professor at University of Shizuoka in 2009. His research interest has been focused on genome mining for discovering new natural products from PKS, NRPS and other important molecules of interest. He has also placed much effort into producing new molecules by rationally engineering the above system using conventional and straightforward methods.
Zhiyan Xiao
Zhiyan Xiao received her PhD in medicinal chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (USA) in 2003. Following a brief post-doctoral stay in the same laboratory, she joined the Institute of Materia Medica, Peking Union Medical College and Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences as Assistant Professor in 2004, where she is currently Professor of Medicinal Chemistry. Her current research emphasizes the integration of chemoinformatic techniques and medicinal chemistry efforts. Her research interests mainly focus on rational drug design-directed lead identification and optimization, which involves two alternative approaches either oriented by molecular targets or guided by natural lead structures.