Archive for the ‘Board News’ Category

NPR welcomes Professor Greg Challis to its Editorial Board

Natural Product Reports is delighted to announce Professor Greg Challis (University of Warwick, UK) as a new Editorial Board member. 

Greg Challis graduated with a BSc in Chemistry (1994) from Imperial College London and a DPhil in Organic Chemistry (1998) from the University of Oxford. He was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Chemistry at Johns Hopkins University, USA (1998-2000) and in the Department of Genetics at the John Innes Centre, UK (2000-2001). In 2001 he was appointed to a lectureship in Chemical Biology in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Warwick and in 2006 he was promoted to his present position of Professor of Chemical Biology.

Challis’s research interests encompass diverse aspects of the chemistry and biology of natural products, including genomics-driven discovery of new bioactive metabolites, elucidation of novel pathways for natural product biosynthesis, mechanistic enzymology of unusual biosynthetic enzymes, biosynthetic engineering approaches to the production of novel natural product derivatives, elucidation of the biological functions of natural products, and natural product total synthesis. His research achievements have been recognised by numerous honours and awards, most recently the Gabor Medal (2009).

Why not read some of Greg Challis’s latest NPR contributions to NPR:

New natural product biosynthetic chemistry discovered by genome mining
Nat. Prod. Rep., 2009,26, 977-986

Ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptide natural products: overview and recommendations for a universal nomenclature
Nat. Prod. Rep., 2013,30, 108-160 (bottromycins section)

NPR benefits from the expertise of exceptional scientists guiding the development of the journal.
 Find out more on our Editorial and Advisory Board members!

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Welcome to Professor Daniel Romo who joins the NPR Editorial Board

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Professor Daniel Romo to the Editorial Board of Natural Products Reports, as of January 2013. 

Daniel Romo received his B.A. in chemistry/biology from Texas A&M and a PhD in Chemistry from Colorado State University as a NSF Minority Graduate Fellow under the tutelage of the late Prof. Albert I. Meyers. Following postdoctoral studies at Harvard as an American Cancer Society Fellow, with Prof. Stuart L. Schreiber, he began his independent career at TexasA&M in 1993 and is currently Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Natural Products LINCPHIN Laboratory (TAMU).

Research interests in the Romo Group are at the interface of chemistry and biology focused on total synthesis and biomechanistic studies of natural products and the asymmetric synthesis and application of beta-lactones in organic synthesis and as potential drug candidates. This search led Romo to examine marine specimens –  many recent bioactive molecules have been discovered in marine species that are now making their way to the clinic.
Romo sees natural products as playgrounds for developing new synthetic strategies and making related compounds with potentially important therapeutic applications. Natural products are keys to cell biology, and he is working to build the bridge between synthesis and biology.

‘If I couldn’t be dreaming up ways to make natural products, I would want to be diving to isolate those natural products and fishing from the deck on my off time!’ says Daniel.

Why not read Daniel Romo’s latest NPR review article:

Biosynthesis, asymmetric synthesis, and pharmacology, including cellular targets, of the pyrrole-2-aminoimidazole marine alkaloids
Ali Al-Mourabit, Manuel A. Zancanella, Supriya Tilvi and Daniel Romo
DOI: 10.1039/C0NP00013B

 
NPR benefits from the expertise of exceptional scientists guiding the development of the journal. Do you know who they are? Find out more on our Editorial and Advisory Board members.
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New Editorial Board members for NPR

We are delighted to announce the appointment of two new members to the Editorial Board of Natural Products Reports, Professors Ikuro Abe and Dirk Trauner who will be joining the Board in January 2012.

Ikuro Abe received his PhD degree in 1989 from The University of Tokyo under the direction of Professor Yutaka Ebizuka, where he studied chemistry and biochemistry of natural products biosynthesis.  After two years postdoctoral research with Professor Guy Ourisson at the CNRS Institut de Chimie des Substances Naturelles, and mostly with Professor Michel Rohmer at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Mulhouse, in France (1989-1991), he went to the USA to work with Professor Glenn D. Prestwich at the State University of New York at Stony Brook (1991-1996) and then at The University of Utah (1996-1998) as a Research Assistant Professor.  In 1998, he returned to Japan to the University of Shizuoka, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences (1998-2009).  In 2009, he moved back to The University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences as Professor of Natural Products Chemistry.

His main research interests focus on exploring and engineering natural products biosynthesis, see below for some examples of his work:

Enzymatic synthesis of cyclic triterpenes
Ikuro Abe
DOI: 10.1039/B616857B

Structure and function of the chalcone synthase superfamily of plant type III polyketide synthases
Ikuro Abe and Hiroyuki Morita
DOI: 10.1039/B909988N


Dirk Trauner was born and grew up in Linz, Austria. After studying biology and then biochemistry at the University of Vienna, he joined Professor Johann Mulzerʼs group at the Free University of Berlin to pursue natural products synthesis. In the late 1990s, he was a postdoctoral fellow with Professor Samuel J. Danishefsky at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. In 2000, Dirk joined the University of California, Berkeley, where he rose through the ranks to become an Associate Professor of Chemistry. In summer of 2008, he moved to the University of Munich, where he currently resides as a Professor for Chemical Biology and Genetics.

His research interests range from organic synthesis and natural products to chemical neurobiology and optochemical genetics. View his contribution to our Synthesis themed issue below:

The chemistry of marine furanocembranoids, pseudopteranes, gersolanes, and related natural products
Paul A. Roethle and Dirk Trauner
DOI: 10.1039/B705660P

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New Advisory Board members for NPR

The Editorial Office is pleased to announce the recent appointment of two new Advisory Board members for Natural Product Reports, Yeo Joon Yoon and Vanderlan da Silva Bolzani.

Yeo Joon Yoon received his PhD in chemical and biological engineering from Seoul National University in 2000. He has worked with Prof Charles R. Hutchinson at the University of Wisconsin at Madison as a predoctoral researcher and also with Prof David H. Sherman at the University of Minnesota as a postdoctoral researcher. In 2002 he returned to Korea as Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering at the University of Ulsan and then moved to Ewha Womans University in 2004, where he is Associate Professor of Chemistry.

His major scientific interests are the characterization of biosynthetic pathways for secondary metabolites, focusing on polyketides and aminoglycosides in actinomycetes, combinatorial biosynthesis of novel natural products, and the application of metabolic engineering and synthetic biology to the production of secondary metabolites.


Vanderlan da Silva Bolzani is full professor at Sao Paulo State University (UNESP), and has published over 186 research publications, 5 patents and 4 book chapters. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK) and a Science Productivity CNPq Fellow, she has received several awards, the most recent is the Distinguished Woman in Science Chemistry and Chemical Engineering award conceived by the ACS & IUPAC. Her PhD degree in Organic Chemistry was obtained under the guidance of Professor Otto Richard Gottlieb, University of São Paulo and after a post-doctorate at Virginia Polytechnic Institute (VPISU-USA) she joined the São Paulo State University (UNESP). Dr. Bolzani is currently is Vice-Director of the UNESP Innovation Agency (AUIN), was President of the Brazilian Chemical Society from 2008-2010, and is currently Counsellor. 

Her field of interest is plant science, and she has been involved in the isolation, bioactivity and function of secondary metabolites and peptides from plants. Also she has studied biosynthesis of piperidine alkaloids, and recently has been involved in metabolomic studies of medicinal plants and sugar cane. She has strong work collaborations with national pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries looking for new drugs from plants species. 

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Announcement: New NPR Editorial Board Chair

We are delighted to announce that Professor Brad Moore (University of California, San Diego, US) will take position as the Chair of the Natural Product Reports Editorial Board in January 2011. Brad has been a part of the NPR Editorial Board since 2005.

Professor Marcel Jaspars, the current Chair, will retire from his post at the end of 2010. Marcel joined the Editorial Board in 2003 and became Chair in 2007. In the past 4 years Marcel has overseen significant growth in the journal, both in the number of quality articles published and in the topics covered in the journal. The Editorial team would like to thank Marcel for all his work on NPR over the past eight years.

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