RSC Medicinal Chemistry Blog

We are delighted to welcome our new Associate Editor Dr Susanne Müller-Knapp from Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany to the RSC Medicinal Chemistry Editorial Board! Read on to find out more about Susanne and her thoughts about the journal and her new role.

More about Susanne

Susanne Müller-Knapp is Chief Operating Officer at the Structural Genomics Consortium, SGC, Frankfurt and Director of Operations of the Chemical Probes Portal.

She obtained a PhD at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. After spending several years as postdoctoral researcher in the area of inflammation and gene regulation at the Karolinska Institute and at the DIBIT San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan, Italy, she joined 2004 the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC), at Oxford University, where she coordinated the Epigenetic Probe Project and lead a group, focusing on the evaluation of novel chemical probes, cellular target engagement of these tool compounds and their biological roles. Her research now focuses on using chemical biology to dissect the role of specific targets in biology and disease with a main focus on cancer. In her role as Director of Operations for the Chemical Probes Portal, she focuses on providing data and knowledge on high quality chemical tools and establishing quality standards for chemical probes with diverse modes of action.

Susanne’s thoughts on our journal

We asked Susanne some questions about working with our journal, read on to see what she thinks.

What are your thoughts about RSC Medicinal Chemistry and the future of the journal?

“RSC Medicinal Chemistry publishes high-quality articles, adhering to rigorous standards to showcase compelling research in medicinal chemistry and drug discovery. The journal takes a forward-thinking approach, offering a variety of engaging themed collections. I especially value its commitment to Open Science, a principle I strongly support.”

How do you feel about starting your new role as an Associate Editor for our journal?

“I am delighted to have been selected as Associate Editor. I am eager to work with the RSC Medicinal Chemistry team and help drive the journal’s ongoing growth and success. Being able to help shaping the future of medicinal chemistry by supporting emerging trends and staying at the forefront of ground breaking research and innovative drug discovery strategies will be both exciting and fulfilling.”

As an Associate Editor, what subject areas would you like to see in RSC Medicinal Chemistry?

“As a biologist by training, I am passionate about enhancing communication between chemists and biologists to promote better annotation and more effective use of small molecules, ultimately improving reproducibility in chemical biology. Bridging this gap is crucial for advancing the field, and I find the prospect of helping to shape high-quality content that enriches both scientific understanding and practical applications incredibly rewarding. This interdisciplinary dialogue has the potential to drive more impactful research and innovation across disciplines.”

You can find out more about the rest of our Editorial Board members on our website and submit your article to them today!

We are delighted to welcome our new Associate Editor Professor Sankar Guchhait from the National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER), India to the RSC Medicinal Chemistry Editorial Board! Read on to find out more about Sankar and his thoughts about the journal and his new role.

More about Sankar

Sankar K. Guchhait is a Professor in Department of Medicinal Chemistry at National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER), Mohali, India. He did his PhD research at Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS), Kolkata. Following his postdoctoral research for four years at University of Tennessee, Knoxville, University of Illinois at Chicago, and University of California, Riverside, he started his research and teaching career at NIPER in 2007.

His research focuses majorly on medicinal chemistry, anticancer drug discovery, and synthesis of natural product-based and pharmaceutically important heterocyclic compounds. The research activities in his group made significant contributions to areas, especially medicinal chemistry strategies – Natural product-inspired, Scaffold-hopping, and Choice-based change approaches, Molecular medicinal insights, creating a new from clinical trial agents and drugs, and identification of target-specific unique pharmacophore motifs.

He is recipient of several honors and awards, such as the Chemical Research Society of India (CRSI) Bronze Medal in 2022 and the Indian Chemical Society’s Professor D. Nasipuri Memorial Award in 2015.

Sankar’s thoughts on our journal

We asked Sankar some questions about working with our journal, read on to see what he thinks.

What are your thoughts about RSC Medicinal Chemistry and the future of the journal?

“RSC Medicinal Chemistry publishes quality articles and offers guidance and insight into the wonderful and fascinating diversity of evolving medicinal chemistry strategies and drug discovery research. The journal has the potential to become a leader and worldwide premier resource for medicinal chemistry education and research tools.”

How do you feel about starting your new role as an Associate Editor for our journal?

“In my new role as Associate Editor, I am excited and looking forward to working with the RSC Medicinal Chemistry journal team and contributing to the journal’s increasing growth.”

As an Associate Editor, what subject areas would you like to see in RSC Medicinal Chemistry?

“I would like to see the RSC MedChem journal covering more research articles on molecular medicinal properties insights into drug discovery research, in vitro pharmacodynamics, physicochemical and pharmacokinetic properties linking with molecular structures, rational design and investigation with analytical thinking, and use of advanced sophisticated instruments in the field.

By publishing articles on these subject areas, the journal would provide valuable research and educational knowledge resources and increasingly attract the chemists and pharmaceutical scientists, especially organic chemists that are interested in medicinal chemistry research.”

You can find out more about the rest of our Editorial Board members on our website and submit your article to them today!

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

About Jian:

Jian Zhang is a Distinguished Professor and Head of Medicinal Chemistry & Bioinformatics Center at Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine in China. In addition, he is also Dean of the School of Pharmacy at Ningxia Medical University, a member of the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council in China, and founder of Nutshell Therapeutics.

Professor Zhang has a track record of more than 200 publications in high-ranked scientific journals, including patents and patent applications, and numerous invited talks worldwide. He has received some awards such as ACS Excellent Research Advisor, Biomedical Innovation Award by Chinese Pharmaceutical Society, and One of China’s Top Ten Science and Technology Young Scientist in 2017. Jian’s research focuses on drug design, medicinal chemistry and chemical biology, addressing target identification and first-in-class allosteric drug discovery. Find out more about Jian’s research over on his webpage.

Submit your research to Jian now!

You can find out about all our Associate Editors and the full Editorial Board on our webpage.

Check out Jian’s recent Chemical Science publication below:

Discovery of cryptic allosteric sites using reversed allosteric communication by a combined computational and experimental strategy
Duan Ni, Jiacheng Wei, Xinheng He, Ashfaq Ur Rehman, Xinyi Li, Yuran Qiu, Jun Pu, Shaoyong Lu and Jian Zhang
Chem. Sci., 2021, 12, 464-476

We are delighted to announce that Professor Mike Waring has joined the RSC Medicinal Chemistry Editorial Board as our newest Editor-in-Chief!

Mike said about joining as Editor-in-Chief: “RSC Medicinal Chemistry is one of the premier medicinal chemistry journals and we look forward to continuing to publish cutting edge science with the highest standards of rigour. I hope that the work published in the journal will lead to the continued dissemination and evolution of best practice in our discipline that will drive our ability to deliver new therapies more effectively.”

About Mike:

Mike Waring is Chair of Medicinal Chemistry at Newcastle University and Head of Chemistry for the Cancer Research UK Newcastle Drug Discovery Unit.  He was previously Principal Scientist in Medicinal Chemistry at AstraZeneca. He has worked mainly in the areas of diabetes and oncology and his work has contributed to the discovery of 14 drug candidates, including the marketed EGFR inhibitor osimertinib (Tagrisso™). He has made significant contributions to the field in many areas, perhaps most notably property-based optimisation, covalent inhibition, novel binding modes and new methods of hit generation.  He is a 2018 American Chemical Society Hero of Chemistry, recipient of the 2017 RSC Malcolm Campbell Medal, and an elected fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

For more information, visit Mike’s webpage, and check out some of his publications from the RSC below.

Microwave-assisted synthesis of 4-oxo-2-butenoic acids by aldol-condensation of glyoxylic acid
Mélanie Uguen, Conghao Gai, Lukas J. Sprenger, Hang Liu, Andrew G. Leach and Michael J. Waring
RSC Adv., 2021, 11, 30229-30236

Highly efficient on-DNA amide couplings promoted by micelle forming surfactants for the synthesis of DNA encoded libraries
James H. Hunter, Matthew J. Anderson, Isaline F. S. F. Castan, Jessica S. Graham, Catherine L. A. Salvini, Harriet A. Stanway-Gordon, James J. Crawford, Andrew Madin, Garry Pairaudeau and Michael J. Waring
Chem. Sci., 2021, 12, 9475-9484

The structure-guided discovery of osimertinib: the first U.S. FDA approved mutant selective inhibitor of EGFR T790M
Sam Butterworth, Darren A. E. Cross, M. Raymond V. Finlay, Richard A. Ward and Michael J. Waring
Med. Chem. Commun., 2017, 8, 820-822

Discovery of a series of 2-(pyridinyl)pyrimidines as potent antagonists of GPR40
Michael J. Waring, David J. Baker, Stuart N. L. Bennett, Alexander G. Dossetter, Mark Fenwick, Rob Garcia, Jennie Georgsson, Sam D. Groombridge, Susan Loxham, Philip A. MacFaul, Katie G. Maskill, David Morgan, Jenny Morrell, Helen Pointon, Graeme R. Robb, David M. Smith, Stephen Stokes and Gary Wilkinson
Med. Chem. Commun., 2015, 6, 1024-1029

We are delighted to announce that Dr. Maria Duca will be joining RSC Medicinal Chemistry as an Associate Editor from the 1^st June.

About Maria:

Maria Duca completed her undergraduate studies in Pharmacy and Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Bologna, Italy, in the Faculty of Pharmacy. She obtained her PhD in Molecular Biochemistry under the supervision of Dr. Paola B. Arimondo at the National Natural History Museum in Paris, France, working on topoisomerase II inhibitors. A 2-year post-doctoral training in Sydney Hecht’s lab in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Virginia, USA, allowed her to pursue the study of nucleic acids working on targeted protein mutagenesis upon chemical modification of tRNAs.

Maria is now head of the Targeting of Nucleic Acids research group in the Institute of Chemistry of Nice (Université Côte d’Azur – CNRS), after CNRS recruitment as a Research Scientist in 2007. Her research activities focus on the targeting of non-coding RNAs using synthetic small molecules toward innovative therapeutic approaches for anticancer, antiviral and antimicrobial applications.

Submit your research to Maria from 1^st June 2021!

You can find out about all our Associate Editors and the full Editorial Board on our webpage.

Check out a selection of Maria’s recent publications with the RSC:

Synthetic small-molecule RNA ligands: future prospects as therapeutic agents

A. Di Giorgio and M. Duca*

Med. Chem. Commun., 2019, 10, 1242-1255

Functionalized C-nucleosides as remarkable RNA binders: targeting of prokaryotic ribosomal A-site RNA
Jean-Patrick Joly, Marc Gaysinski, Lorena Zara, Maria Duca* and Rachid Benhida*
Chem. Commun., 2019, 55, 10432-10435

Building of neomycin–nucleobase–amino acid conjugates for the inhibition of oncogenic miRNAs biogenesis
Duc Duy Vo, Cécile Becquart, Thi Phuong Anh Tran, Audrey Di Giorgio, Fabien Darfeuille, Cathy Staedel and  Maria Duca*
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2018, 16, 6262-6274

We were delighted to welcome to the team Professor Younghui Zhang as an Associate Editor for RSC Medicinal Chemistry earlier this year, and we wanted to find out more about him and his research experiences. Read our interview with Yonghui below.

What attracted you to pursue a career in medicinal chemistry and how did you get to where you are now?
A career in medicinal chemistry integrates my training background in both chemical biology (postdoctoral position) and organic chemistry (Ph. D). I therefore chose to join the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Tsinghua University in 2013 as a Professor.

Why did you choose to specialize in your specific research field?
Over the past 10 years, I have come to realize the indispensable role of lipid metabolism in immune regulation. However, the underlying mechanism is obscure and there are few translational efforts. This led to my group starting to identify drug targets in lipid biosynthesis that could help to develop new immunotherapies, as well as other medicinal chemistry efforts in this area.

What do you see as the biggest challenges facing researchers who work in your field?
A lack of feasible drug targets.

What is the most exciting research paper that you have read recently?
A paper from 11 years ago. It brought up hope to fight KRAS. (K-Ras(G12C)inhibitors allosterically control GTP affinity and effector interactions. Nature, 2013, 503, 548–551.)

Which of your publications are you most proud of? Which is your favourite piece of your own research?
A paper in Cell, 2018, and a paper in Immunity, 2019. These are my favourite pieces of research that demonstrate the roles of isoprenoids in immune regulation.

What is your biggest passion outside of science?
Reading and food.

What career would you have chosen if you had not taken this career path?
A writer. I would like to interpret lives in my own way.

What do you see as the most important scientific achievement of the last decade?
Immunotherapies. Now people can finally realize the power of the immune system and how it can be exploited to fight diseases.

Why should young people study chemistry, and what advice would you give anyone thinking of pursuing chemistry?
Young people should study chemistry because it is so important, and it dominates our lives.  Also, one must persist to understand the beauty of chemistry.

What are you most looking forward to in your new Associate Editor role?
Bringing more innovative research to publication.

About Yonghui:

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.

Submit your research to Yonghui now!

                   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.’

Professor Sally-Ann Poulsen

We are delighted to welcome to the team Professor Sally-Ann Poulsen, new MedChemComm Associate Editor.

Professor Poulsen’s research focuses on the development of new chemical probes, medicinal chemistry targeting cancer and infectious disease, and on fragment screening using native state mass spectrometry. You can find out more on her webpage.

Sally-Ann received her PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from Griffith University, before undertaking a Royal Society & National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Howard Florey Research Fellowship at the University of Cambridge. On returning to Australia, she was awarded an Australian Research Council QEII Fellowship, followed by an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship, and is now Professor of Chemical Biology and acting Deputy Director at Griffith Institute for Drug Discovery (GRIDD), Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia.

Professor Poulsen is also a Fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (RACI) (2017), Chair elect of the RACI Medicinal Chemistry and Chemical Biology Division and is a global council member of the International Chemical Biology Society.

Upon joining the MedChemComm team, Poulsen commented,

“I value research integrity and am truly excited to have an opportunity to help MedChemComm to share the wonderful science that is generated by the global medicinal chemistry community.”

Submit your research to Sally-Ann now!