RSC Medicinal Chemistry Blog

                   Dr Paola Castaldi

We are delighted to announce that Dr Paola Castaldi has joined the RSC Medicinal Chemistry Editorial Board.

Paola Castaldi is an experienced and passionate chemical biologist with experience in leading multidisciplinary teams supporting programs across several therapeutic areas and stages. Her drive towards embedding state-of-the-art technologies to drug discovery and development, resulted in several contributions to target identification, mechanism of action and safety deconvolution of therapeutics.

Paola completed her undergraduate studies in pharmaceutical chemistry and received her Laurea (MSc) at University of Padova, Italy. She then went on to conduct graduate research studies at Imperial College London, UK and postdoctoral studies at UCSD and Boston University.

Before joining LifeMine Therapeutics, Paola headed the Chemical Biology & Proteomics department at AstraZeneca. Over the years Paola was responsible for the build of a state-of-the-art chemical biology and mass spectrometry hub with global impact across all therapeutic areas and platforms. Notably she played a critical role to the establishment of the protein degradation and the multiomics initiatives.

Between other responsibilities, Paola is part of the SAB for the Chemical Biology Doctorate Program at Imperial College London and has authored more than 25 peer-reviewed articles.

You can find out more about the full Editorial Board on our webpage.

Paola’s publication with RSC:

Applications of chiral C3-symmetric molecules
Susan E. Gibson and M. Paola Castaldi
Chem. Commun., 2006, 3045-3062

We are delighted to announce that Professor Yonghui Zhang has joined RSC Medicinal Chemistry as an Associate Editor.

Yonghui Zhang received his Ph.D in Chemistry in 2002 from Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences and pursued his postdoctoral training at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the United States. Dr. Zhang is now a Professor at the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Tsinghua University, a leader of higher education and academic research in China. Dr. Zhang has published over 60 papers in the field of medicinal chemistry, organic chemistry, chemical biology and immunology.

He has pioneered in discovering and characterizing the relationship between lipid metabolism and immune regulation. By using a multidisciplinary approach involving structural biology, molecular immunology, cell and mice models, and medicinal chemistry, he demonstrated that the mevalonate pathway is a druggable target for vaccine adjuvants and developed lipophilic bisphosphonates and statins as Th-1 vaccine adjuvants. Currently, his lab is developing and applying innovative chemical approaches to a variety of immuno-modulatory process, with a focus on vaccination, allogeneic immune cell therapy and new anti-infection strategy. Dr. Zhang has published over 60 papers in the field of medicinal chemistry, organic chemistry, chemical biology and immunology.

In addition to his academic work, through Unicet, a biotech start-up he co-founded, he is also moving forward in the newly emerging space of gamma delta T cell based therapeutics to translate his research work into innovative medicine and building proprietary biotech platforms centered around gamma delta T cells as the cell therapeutic vehicle and butyrophilin-targeting therapeutics.

Yonghui said about joining as Associate Editor: ‘It is my great honor to join RSC Medicinal Chemistry. I truly appreciate the opportunity to serve this wonderful community of my fellow professionals devoting their efforts in medicinal chemistry and I will do my best to contribute to the efficient communications among the contributors and readers of the journal.’