RSC Medicinal Chemistry Blog

We are pleased to welcome nominations for the 2022 RSC Medicinal Chemistry Emerging Investigator Lectureship. The Lectureship celebrates early career researchers who have made significant contributions in the fields of medicinal chemistry and drug discovery.

Nominations will close 8 October 2021.

The recipient of the lectureship will receive a contribution of up to £1000 towards speaking at a conference in 2022. We recognise many researchers’ travel plans for 2022 are uncertain, and are flexible in accommodating speaking engagements at digital conferences.

Eligibility
The lectureship is open to candidates who received their PhD in 2012 or later and who have made a significant contribution to medicinal chemistry in their early career, particularly if they have brought new ideas to drug discovery.

How you can nominate:
If you would like to nominate someone please email us (medchem-rsc@rsc.org) with the following details:

• Their name
• Their affiliation
• At least one paragraph explaining their achievements and why you think they should be considered

Additional supporting information, for example their CV, is very helpful in making a decision but is not mandatory for making a nomination.

Self-nominations are accepted but must be supported by a letter of support from your Head of Department or similar person at your institute.

Selection
All qualified nominations will be considered and a short-list of candidates with be selected based on the information provided at nomination. The RSC Medicinal Chemistry Editorial Board will then vote to select the recipient and the winner will be announced in spring 2022.

Past winners of the RSC Medicinal Chemistry Emerging Investigator Lectureship (previously named the MedChemComm Emerging Investigator Lectureship) include:

• Dr Jacob Bush (GSK and The Francis Crick Institute) – 2021
• Dr Chandradhish Ghosh (Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces) – 2020
• Dr. Amanda Hargrove (Duke University, USA) – 2019
• Dr. Gonçalo Bernardes (University of Cambridge, UK) – 2018
• Dr Laura H. Heitman (Leiden University, Netherlands) – 2017
• Dr Alessio Ciulli (University of Dundee, UK) – 2016
• Professor Richard Payne (University of Sydney, Australia) – 2015
• Professor Christian Heinis (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland) – 2013

Professor Jean-Louis Reymond

We are delighted to announce that Professor Jean-Louis Reymond has joined the RSC Medicinal Chemistry Editorial Board.

Jean-Louis Reymond studied Chemistry and Biochemistry at ETH Zürich, Switzerland and obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Lausanne on natural products synthesis (1989). After a Post-Doc and Assistant Professorship at the Scripps Research Institute, USA, he joined the University of Bern, Switzerland (1997).

His research focuses on the enumeration and visualization of chemical space for small molecule drug discovery, the synthesis of new molecules from the Generated DataBase  (GDB, http://gdb.unibe.ch), and the design and synthesis of peptide dendrimers and polycyclic peptides as antimicrobials and for nucleic acids delivery.

He is the author of more than 300 scientific publications and reviews. See a selection of his recent RSC publications below:

An antimicrobial bicyclic peptide from chemical space against multidrug resistant Gram-negative bacteria

Chem. Commun., 2018,54, 5130-5133 

Datasets and their influence on the development of computer assisted synthesis planning tools in the pharmaceutical domain

Chem. Sci., 2020,11, 154-168  (Open Access)

Design, crystal structure and atomic force microscopy study of thioether ligated d,l-cyclic antimicrobial peptides against multidrug resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Chem. Sci., 2017,8, 7464-7475  (Open Access)    

Cytotoxic peptide conjugates of dinuclear areneruthenium trithiolato complexes

Med. Chem. Commun., 2015,6, 347-350     

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

Congratulations to Professor Amanda Hargrove from Duke University, USA, the recipient of the 2019 MedChemComm Emerging Investigator Lectureship!

The Lectureship was open to any candidate who received their PhD in 2009 or later and have made a significant contribution to medicinal chemistry in their early career. The MedChemComm Editorial Board then voted on a short-list of nominations.

Many congratulations to Prof. Hargrove for winning the lectureship.

About Amanda

Amanda E. Hargrove, Ph.D. joined the faculty at Duke University in 2013 as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry following an NIH postdoctoral fellowship with Professor Peter B. Dervan at the California Institute of Technology and doctoral research at the University of Texas at Austin with Professors Eric V. Anslyn and Jonathan L. Sessler. Her research group at Duke focuses on developing small molecule probes to investigate the structure and function of RNA molecules relevant to human disease. You can find out more about their research by visiting the laboratory webpage.

Prof. Hargrove holds a secondary appointment in the Biochemistry Department and membership in the Duke Cancer Institute, Duke Cellular and Molecular Biology Program, and the Center for Biological and Tissue Engineering. Her recent honors include the ChemComm Emerging Investigator Lectureship, NSF CAREER Award, Cottrell Scholar Award, and the Prostate Cancer Young Investigator Award.

For a selection of her excellent research, please see some of Prof. Hargrove’s recent works below.

Fluorescent peptide displacement as a general assay for screening small molecule libraries against RNA

Org. Biomol. Chem., 2019, 17, 1778-1786

Part of the themed collection: New Talent

Sensing the impact of environment on small molecule differentiation of RNA sequences

Chem. Commun., 2017, 53, 13363-13366

Part of the themed collection: Chemosensors and Molecular Logic

Amiloride as a new RNA-binding scaffold with activity against HIV-1 TAR

Med. Chem. Commun., 2017,8, 1022-1036

Part of the themed collection: 2017 Hot Articles in MedChemComm