Archive for the ‘Board news’ Category

Introducing Professor Scott Silverman, OBC Associate Editor

We are delighted to announce that Professor Scott Silverman has joined Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry as an Associate Editor.  

Professor Silverman’s lab currently focuses on the development, characterization, and application of DNA as a catalyst. Find out more on his lab’s webpage.

Scott K. Silverman was born in 1972 and raised in Los Angeles, California. He received his BS in chemistry from UCLA in 1991, working with Christopher Foote on photooxygenation mechanisms. He obtained his PhD in chemistry from Caltech in 1997, working with Dennis Dougherty to study high-spin organic polyradicals and molecular neurobiology. After postdoctoral research on RNA biochemistry with Thomas Cech at the University of Colorado at Boulder, he joined the University of Illinois in 2000, where he is currently Professor of Chemistry.

Professor Silverman’s recent articles include:

Assessing histidine tags for recruiting deoxyribozymes to catalyze peptide and protein modification reactions
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2016,14, 4697-4703, Paper

DNA-catalyzed glycosylation using aryl glycoside donors
Chem. Commun., 2016,52, 9259-9262, Communication

He has also Guest Edited these recent themed collections

Submit a manuscript for Scott to handle today

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Introducing Professor Motomu Kanai, OBC Associate Editor

Professor Motomu Kanai has joined Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry as an Associate Editor. We are delighted to welcome him to the team and look forward to working with him over the coming years.

 

Motomu Kanai was born in 1967 in Tokyo, Japan, and received his bachelor degree from The University of Tokyo (UTokyo) in 1989 under the direction of late Professor Kenji Koga. In the middle of his PhD course in UTokyo (in 1992), he obtained an assistant professor position in Professor Kiyoshi Tomioka’s group of Osaka University. He obtained his PhD from Osaka University in 1995 before moving to the University of Wisconsin, USA, for postdoctoral studies with Professor Laura L. Kiessling. In 1997 he returned to Japan and joined Professor Masakatsu Shibasaki’s group in UTokyo as an assistant professor, being a lecturer (2000~2003) and an associate professor (2003~2010). He is currently a professor at UTokyo and is a principle investigator of the ERATO Kanai Life Science Project (2011~2017). He has received The Pharmaceutical Society of Japan Award for Young Scientists (2001), Thieme Journals Award (2003), Merck-Banyu Lectureship Award (MBLA: 2005), Asian Core Program Lectureship Award (2008 and 2010), and Thomson-Reuters The 4th Research Front Award (2016). His research interests focus on the design and synthesis of functional (especially, biologically active) molecules.

 

Professor Kanai’s recent articles in OBC include:

5-Position-selective C–H trifluoromethylation of 8-aminoquinoline derivatives
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2016, 14, 8092-8100, Paper

Directing activator-assisted regio- and oxidation state-selective aerobic oxidation of secondary C(sp3)–H bonds in aliphatic alcohols
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2016, 14, 4378-4381, Communication

This article is part of the themed collection: 2016 Hot Articles in Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry

 

Find out more about Professor Kanai and his research on his lab’s webpage.

Submit your work for Professor Kanai to handle today.

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Editor’s Choice – Meet our Associate Editors

Professor Jin-Quan Yu’s (Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California, USA) research centres around the discovery of novel reactions based on C-H activation.

Jin’s recommended articles:

C–H activation enables a rapid structure–activity relationship study of arylcyclopropyl amines for potent and selective LSD1 inhibitors
Shin Miyamura, Misaho Araki, Yosuke Ota, Yukihiro Itoh, Shusuke Yasuda, Mitsuharu Masuda, Tomoyuki Taniguchi, Yoshihiro Sowa, Toshiyuki Sakai, Takayoshi Suzuki, Kenichiro Itami, Junichiro Yamaguchi

Asymmetric synthesis of (−)-renieramycin T
Junhao Jia, Ruijiao Chen, Hao Liu, Xiong Li, Yuanliang Jia, Xiaochuan Chen


Professor Margaret Brimble (University of Auckland, New Zealand) is the Director of Medicinal Chemistry and a distinguished Professor at the University of Auckland. Her research program focuses on the synthesis of bioactive natural products, antimicrobial peptides and peptidomimetics.

Margaret’s recommended articles:

Concise diastereoselective synthesis of calcaripeptide C via asymmetric transfer hydrogenation/Pd-induced chiral allenylzinc as a key reaction
Gullapalli Kumaraswamy, Vykunthapu Narayanarao, Ragam Raju

Concise synthesis of calystegines B and B< intramolecular Nozaki–Hiyama–Kishi reaction
Hong-Yao Wang, Atsushi Kato, Kyoko Kinami, Yi-Xian Li, George W. J. Fleet, Chu-Yi Yu


Professor Christian Hackenberger’s (Leibniz-Institut für Molekulare Pharmakologie and Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Germany) research focuses on the development of new bioorthogonal reactions to study protein function and in particular posttranslational modifications, addressing issues such as the study of the Alzheimer-relevant tau protein, antibody-drug conjugates and new methods for the delivery of functional proteins into cells.

Christian’s recommended articles:

Site-selective incorporation and ligation of protein aldehydes
Richard J. Spears, Martin A. Fascione

Protein ubiquitination via dehydroalanine: development and insights into the diastereoselective 1,4-addition step
Roman Meledin, Sachitanand M. Mali, Sumeet K. Singh, Ashraf Brik


Professor Lei Liu’s (Tsinghua University, China) research group is interested in all aspects of chemical protein synthesis.

Lei’s recommended articles:

Hybrid phase ligation for efficient synthesis of histone proteins
Ruixuan R. Yu, Santosh K. Mahto, Kurt Justus, Mallory M. Alexander, Cecil J. Howard, Jennifer J. Ottesen

Enediyne-based protein capture agents: demonstration of an enediyne moiety acting as a photoaffinity label
Joyee Das, Sayantani Roy, Swapnil Halnor, Amit Kumar Das and Amit Basak


We invite you to submit your urgent research to their editorial offices. With a reputation for quality and fast times to publication, OBC is the home of highly significant original research and reviews in all areas of organic chemistry, including organic synthesis, physical organic chemistry, supramolecular chemistry and bioorganic chemistry.

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*Access is free until 31/12/2016 through a registered RSC account.

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Congratulations to Ben Feringa

The prestigious Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2016 was awarded jointly to Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa for their outstanding contributions to the design and synthesis of molecular machines. Many congratulations to all of them!


Ben Feringa has not only significantly influenced our journal as the  inaugural Chair of Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry from 2003 to 2007, but he has also so far published an impressive 40 manuscripts in OBC since it’s launch. We would like to mark this special occasion by highlighting only a few of them here:


Bacterial patterning controlled by light exposure
Willem A. Velema, Jan Pieter van der Berg, Wiktor Szymanski, Arnold J. M. Driessen and Ben L. Feringa

Mild Ti-mediated transformation of t-butyl thio-ethers into thio-acetates
Thomas C. Pijper, Jort Robertus, Wesley R. Browne and Ben L. Feringa

Silanization of quartz, silicon and mica surfaces with light-driven molecular motors: construction of surface-bound photo-active nanolayers
Gábor London, Gregory T. Carroll and Ben L. Feringa

Chiral separation by enantioselective liquid-liquid extraction
Boelo Schuur, Bastiaan J. V. Verkuijl, Adriaan J. Minnaard, Johannes G. de Vries, Hero J. Heeres and Ben L. Feringa

Catalytic asymmetric conjugate addition of dialkylzinc reagents to α,β-unsaturated sulfones
Pieter H. Bos, Beatriz Maciá, M. Ángeles Fernández-Ibáñez, Adriaan J. Minnaard and Ben L. Feringa

Copper-free ‘click’: 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition of azides and arynes
Lachlan Campbell-Verduyn, Philip H. Elsinga, Leila Mirfeizi, Rudi A. Dierckx and Ben L. Feringa

A redesign of light-driven rotary molecular motors
Michael M. Pollard, Auke Meetsma and Ben L. Feringa

Photoresponsive dithienylethene-urea-based organogels with “reversed” behavior
Masako Akazawa, Kingo Uchida, Jaap J. D. de Jong, Jetsuda Areephong, Marc Stuart, Giuseppe Caroli, Wesley R. Browne and Ben L. Feringa

Rhodium/phosphoramidite-catalyzed asymmetric arylation of aldehydes with arylboronic acids
Richard B. C. Jagt, Patrick Y. Toullec, Johannes G. de Vries, Ben L. Feringa and Adriaan J. Minnaard

Enantioselective synthesis of β2-amino acids using rhodium-catalyzed hydrogenation
Rob Hoen, Theodora Tiemersma-Wegman, Barbara Procuranti, Laurent Lefort, Johannes G. de Vries, Adriaan J. Minnaard and Ben L. Feringa


If you are interested please find a full list of his OBC articles here.

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New Editorial and Advisory Board Members

We are very pleased to welcome two new members to our Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry Editorial Board and two new members to our Advisory Board – Dr Géraldine Masson (Institut de Chimie des Substances Naturelles, France) and Professor Govindasamy Mugesh (Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India), and Dr Gonçalo Bernardes (University of Cambridge, UK) and Dr Ratmir Derda (University of Alberta, Canada).

Géraldine Masson received her PhD in 2003 from the Joseph Fourier University, (France), under the supervision of Dr. Sandrine Py and Prof. Yannick Vallée. In the years 2003–2005 she was a Marie Curie postdoctoral research fellow with Prof. Jan van Maarseveen and Prof. Henk Hiemstra at the University of Amsterdam (Holland). In 2005, she joined the Institut de Chimie des Substances Naturelles (CNRS, France) as Chargé de Recherche and was promoted to Director of Research 2nd class in 2014. Her group’s research activities are directed toward the development of new organocatalytic enantioselective reactions and novel synthetic methodologies, and photoredox catalysis and their application in the synthesis of diverse natural and unnatural molecules displaying biologically activities.


Mugesh received his B.Sc. (1990) and M.Sc. (1993) degrees from the University of Madras and Bharathidasan University, respectively. He obtained his Ph.D. (1998) at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Technical University, Braunschweig, Germany and a Skaggs postdoctoral fellow at the Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, USA. Mugesh is an author of more than 120 publications in international peer reviewed journals. He received several awards and recognitions, which include: J. C. Bose National Fellowship, Government of India (2016); Asian Rising Star Commemorative Plaque, Asian Chemical Congress (2013), Fellow, Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC, 2013), Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize (2012), Fellow, The National Academy of Sciences, India (2012), AstraZeneca Excellence in Chemistry Award (2012); Fellow, Indian Academy of Sciences (2012); Swarnajayanti Fellowship, Government of India (2006-07).

His research interests include:

  • chemistry of thyroid hormone metabolism,
  • development of novel therapeutics for endothelial dysfunction and neurodegenerative diseases, and
  • nanomaterials for biological applications.

Gonçalo Bernardes graduated in Chemistry from the University of Lisbon in 2004 and soon moved to the University of Oxford where he completed his D.Phil. in 2008 under the supervision of Prof. Ben Davis. He was then awarded a Marie-Curie Fellowship to perform postdoctoral studies with Prof. Peter H. Seeberger. After a short period in Portugal working as a Group Leader at Alfama Lda., Gonçalo moved to the ETH Zürich to join the lab of Prof. Dario Neri. Gonçalo started his independent research career in 2013 at the Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge after being awarded a prestigious Royal Society University Research Fellowship. Simultaneously, he founded a pioneering research unit in Chemical Pharmacology at the Instituto de Medicina Molecular in Lisbon. Despite his early age, he has published >50 papers and 5 patents. He has picked many accolades during his research career such as the European Young Chemist Award – Silver Medal in 2014, and more recentlythe Chem Soc Rev Emerging Investigator Lectureship 2016 and the RSC Harrison–Meldola Memorial Prize. For his efforts in translational research, Gonçalo was distinguished by the Portuguese Ministry of Health (MH) of Portugal for relevant services to Public Health and Medicine.

He now spends his time between his labs in Cambridge and Lisbon, directing a research program at the interface of chemistry and biology with a focus on the development of novel chemoselective reactions for the modification of biomolecules, and their use to understand and influence human disease.

Ratmir Derda received his undergraduate degree in Physics from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 2001 and Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2008, under the supervision of Laura L. Kiessling. From 2008 to 2011, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University working under the supervision of George M. Whitesides and Donald E. Ingber. He joined University of Alberta in 2011 as an Assistant Professor in Chemistry and the Principal Investigator at the Alberta Glycomics Centre.

The Derda Lab centers on the development and mechanistic investigation of chemical transformations of genetically-encoded substrates. We employ genetically-encoded chemical libraries to attack unsolved problems in molecular recognition to aid the discovery of new therapeutics, biomaterials and molecular diagnostics.


Find some of their most recent RSC publications below or find out more about the other members of our Editorial and Advisory Boards here.


Catalytic, highly enantioselective, direct amination of enecarbamates
Audrey Dumoulin, Claudia Lalli, Pascal Retailleau and Géraldine Masson
Chem. Comm. , 2015, 51 , 5383-5386, DOI: 10.1039/C4CC08052A, Communication

One pot and selective intermolecular aryl- and heteroaryl-trifluoromethylation of alkenes by photoredox catalysis
Aude Carboni, Guillaume Dagousset, Emmanuel Magnier and Géraldine Masson
Chem. Comm. , 2014, 50 , 14197-14200, DOI: 10.1039/C4CC08052A, Communication

Insights into the catalytic mechanism of synthetic glutathione peroxidase mimetics
Debasish Bhowmick and Govindasamy Mugesh
Org. Biomol. Chem. , 2015, 13, 10262-10272, DOI: 10.1039/C5OB01665G, Review Article

Introduction of a catalytic triad increases the glutathione peroxidase-like activity of diaryl diselenides
Debasish Bhowmick and Govindasamy Mugesh
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2015, 13, 9072-9082, DOI: 10.1039/C5OB01294E, Paper

Iminoboronates are Efficient Intermediates for Selective, Rapid and Reversible N-Terminal Cysteine Functionalisation
Hélio Faustino, Maria José Silva, Luis F. Veiros, Gonçalo J. L. Bernardes and Pedro M. P. Gois
Chem. Sci., 2016, Accepted Manuscript, DOI: 10.1039/C6SC01520D, Edge Article

Natural product modulators of transient receptor potential (TRP) channels as potential anti-cancer agents
Tiago Rodrigues, Florian Sieglitz and Gonçalo J. L. Bernardes
Chem. Soc. Rev., 2016, Advance Article, DOI: 10.1039/C5CS00916B, Tutorial Review

Phage-displayed macrocyclic glycopeptide libraries
Simon Ng and Ratmir Derda
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2016, 14, 5539-5545, DOI: 10.1039/C5OB02646F, Communication

Heat-enhanced peptide synthesis on Teflon-patterned paper
Frédérique Deiss, Yang Yang, Wadim L. Matochko and Ratmir Derda
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2016, 14, 5148-5156, DOI: 10.1039/C6OB00898D, Paper

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Dr Keith Stubbs joins Advisory Board

New OBC Advisory Board memberWe are pleased to announce that Dr Keith Stubbs, University of Western Australia, has recently joined the Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry Advisory Board.

Dr Keith Stubbs completed his undergraduate and PhD studies at UWA, followed by a two year post-doctoral position at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. He currently is an ARC Future Fellow.

His research group mainly focusses on carbohydrate research ranging from new therapeutic targets against antibiotic and herbicide resistance to tools to study carbohydrate-processing enzymes, as well as on microfluidics as a new technique in organic synthesis.


Selection of his most recent publications:

Gaining insight into the catalysis by GH20 lacto-N-biosidase using small molecule inhibitors and structural analysis (Open Access)
Chem. Commun., 2015, 51, 15008-15011. DOI: 10.1039/C5CC05494J, Communication

An interactive database to explore herbicide physicochemical properties
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2015, 13, 5586-5590. DOI: 10.1039/C5OB00469A, Communication

A simple and robust preparation of N-acetylindoxyls: precursors for indigogenic substrates
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2015, 13, 905,-908. DOI: 10.1039/C4OB02248C, Paper

Photoredox catalysis under shear using thin film vortex microfluidics
Chem. Commun., 2015, 51, 11041-11044. DOI: 10.1039/C5CC02153G, Communication

Thin film microfluidic synthesis of fluorescent highly substituted pyridines
Green Chem., 2014, 16, 3450-3453. DOI: 10.1039/C4GC00881B, Communication

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Introducing OBC Associate Editor Prof. Christian Hackenberger

Professor Christian Hackenberger has joined Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry as an Associate Editor. We are delighted to welcome him to the team and look forward to working with him over the coming years.

Christian completed his graduate studies with Prof. Sam Gellman (Univeristy Wisconsin-Madison) and his doctoral work with Prof. Carsten Bolm at the Rhine-Westphalia Institute of Technology Aachen. After his postdoctoral stay in the group of Prof. Barbara Imperiali at MIT he started his own lab at the Freie Universität Berlin as a FCI-Liebig-Scholar and Emmy Noether Fellow in 2005. In 2012, he accepted a position as the Leibniz–Humboldt Professor for Chemical Biology to the Leibniz Institut for Molecular Pharmacology and the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin.

Christian’s research interests focus around studying the biology, function and pharmacological potency of naturally and unnaturally modified peptides and proteins and include:

  • Development of ligation and modification strategies for the synthesis of functional proteins
  • Bioorthogonal Staudinger phosphite and phosphonite reactions
  • Labeling strategies for antibody ‐ and nanobody conjugates
  • Intracellular delivery and targeting
  • Protein and peptide PEGylation
  • Functional investigation of the Alzheimer‐relevant Tau protein
  • Engineering of protein‐based multivalent scaffolds
  • Metabolic oligosaccharide engineering

On starting his new role as Associate Editor for  Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry Christian said:

I am delighted to act as an associate editor to OBC. Without a question I am very happy about the nomination from the editorial board, especially because I published my very first independent paper back in 2006 in OBC. This new job is both a privilege and an honor to serve the community and work with the editorial team of the Royal Society of Chemistry

Submit a manuscript for Christian to handle
Visit Christian’s homepage

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New Editorial Board Chair

Prof. Andrei YudinWe are delighted to announce that Professor Andrei Yudin has become the Chair of the Editorial Board for Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry.

For the past 3 years Andrei has been handling manuscripts for OBC as an Associate Editor, but with his move to his new role he will no longer be handling manuscripts himself.

The previous Chair, Professor Jeff Bode, passed over the reins to Andrei at the begining of 2015, and this brings his time on the OBC Editorial Board to a close. Professor Paolo Scrimin‘s time on the Editorial Board has also drew to a close at the end of 2014. We would all like to thank both Jeff and Paolo for the many years of service and the invaluable contributions they have made in helping to guide the journal.

About Andrei:

Professor Andrei Yudin obtained his B.Sc. degree at Moscow State University and his Ph.D. degree at the University of Southern California under the direction of Professors G. K. Surya Prakash and George A. Olah. He subsequently took up a postdoctoral position in the laboratory of Professor K. Barry Sharpless at the Scripps Research Institute. In 1998, he started his independent career at the University of Toronto. He received early tenure, becoming an Associate Professor in 2002, and received an early promotion to the rank of a Full Professor in 2007.

Amongst Professor Yudin’s awards are the CSC Award in Combinatorial Chemistry, the 2004 Amgen New Faculty Award, the 2010 CSC Merck-Frosst Therapeutic Center Award, the 2010 Rutherford Medal of the Royal Society of Canada, the 2011 University of Toronto Inventor of the Year Award, and the 2015 Bernard Belleau Award in Medicinal Chemistry. Professor Yudin is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Andrei’s Homepage: http://www.chem.utoronto.ca/wp/yudinlab/

Andrei also maintains a science blog – Amphoteros – that aims to illuminate the ongoing synthetic and chemical biology efforts in his lab and to discuss general advances in science, both from the past and present.

Below is his blog following our Editorial Board meeting at the end of last year.

Some news from London

Posted on November 20, 2014

Over the past several days I have been in London, England, where I attended the Fall Board Meeting of Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry. Richard Kelly, the Managing Editor of this RSC publication, has put this meeting together in the Mayfair district of London. Jeff Bode (ETH, Zurich) is stepping down as the Board Chairman and I will be taking over his responsibilities from January 2015. I have to tip my hat off to Jeff for his leadership over the past several years. I have thoroughly enjoyed my role of one of the Associate Editors. The difference now will be that I am no longer going to handle manuscripts, but will instead oversee some strategic areas for growth and improvement. I think this will be very exciting. Earlier this week, I had a lot of fun together with Jeff as well as Ashraf Brik of Ben Gurion University, Margaret Brimble of the University of Aukland, Tony Davis of the University of Bristol, Jonathan Clayden of the University of Manchester, Pauline Chiu of the University of Hong Kong, and Paolo Scrimin of the University of Padova. Unfortunately, Jin-Quan Yu of Scripps was not able to make it to this meeting. Along with Margaret and I, Jin-Quan is one of OBC’s Associate Editors.

In terms of chemistry, I actually wanted to share something that relates to the work of Margaret Brimble (she flew in all the way from New Zealand to meet us). Margaret brought along some exciting news: NNZ-2566, a molecule developed as part of a collaboration between her lab and Neuren Pharma, was recently approved by the FDA, which has granted orphan drug designation to NNZ-2566 for treatment of Fragile X Syndrome. This tripeptide also demonstrates neuroprotective efficacy in models of traumatic brain injury such as concussion. Evidently, the U.S. Army is very interested in NNZ-2566, although not much is known about the mechanism of action of this exciting compound. What I found remarkable is that the tripeptide is orally bioavailable. The C-methyl proline residue makes this molecule considerably more stable than the corresponding non-methylated congener. The methyl group really “messes up” with the nearby amide bond, which apparently drives the logD down and improves the pharmacological profile of NNZ-2566. I have always thought that there is something special about C-methylproline…

http://www.neurenpharma.com/irm/content/nnz-2566-in-rett-syndrome.aspx?RID=330

Make sure you don’t miss out on the latest journal news by registering your details to receive the regular Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry e-alert.

Follow us on Twitter @OrgBiomolChem

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Professor Ramachary joins the Advisory Board

We are pleased to announce that Professor Dhevalapally B. Ramachary, University of Hyderabad, has recently joined the Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry Advisory Board.

The main focus of his research group is to engineer  novel and green asymmetric cascade and multi-component reactions (MCRs) to generate biologically important molecules and natural products in a single step via emerging chiral amines or amino acid-catalysis.

His research group is actively engaged in the design and synthesis of novel enzyme mimetic small organic amines and amino acids to catalyze the fundamental organic reactions in an enantioselective manner.

Direct organocatalytic stereoselective transfer hydrogenation of conjugated olefins of steroids
RSC Adv., 2013,3, 13497-13506 DOI: 10.1039/C3RA41519H, Paper

Direct catalytic asymmetric synthesis of highly functionalized (2-ethynylphenyl)alcohols via Barbas–List aldol reaction: scope and synthetic applications
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2012, 10, 5094-5101 DOI: 10.1039/C2OB25563D, Paper

Observation of neighboring ortho-hydroxyl group participation in organocatalytic asymmetric sequential Michael-lactonization reactions: synthesis of highly substituted chiral spirodihydrocoumarins
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2012, 10, 5825-5829 DOI: 10.1039/C2OB07122C, Communication

Discovery of 2-aminobuta-1,3-enynes in asymmetric organocascade catalysis: construction of drug-like spirocyclic cyclohexanes having five to six contiguous stereocenters
Chem. Commun., 2012,48, 2252-2254 DOI: 10.1039/C2CC17219D, Communication

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Introducing Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry Associate Editor Professor Margaret Brimble

The Editorial team are very pleased to announce that Professor Margaret Brimble is now an Associate Editor for Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry.

Margaret Brimble holds the Chair of Organic and Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Auckland, is Past-President of the International Society for Heterocyclic Chemistry, Chair of the Physical Sciences Panel of the NZ Marsden Fund and a Principal Investigator in the Maurice Wilkins Centre for Molecular Biodiscovery.

Originally from Auckland, Margaret received a BSc and MSc (Hons) in Chemistry from the University of Auckland and a PhD in organic chemistry at the University of Southampton. In 2004, she won the Novartis Chemistry Award and the James Cook Research Fellowship from the Royal Society of New Zealand and in 2005, she was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (Queen’s Honour) for her service to science. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a Fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute and a Fellow of the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry.

We took this opportunity to ask Margaret a few questions:

•    What inspired you to become a chemist?
The creativity associated with making new molecules for the first time.

•    What exciting projects are you working on at the moment?
The synthesis of some really interesting antimicrobial glycopeptides and the synthesis of complex natural products with anticancer activity.

•    You have won a number of awards since the start of your career, including the Rutherford Medal of the Royal Society of New Zealand last year. What is the key to your success?
To do total synthesis of natural products you have to be persistent and work hard. You have to accept that 90% of what you do will not work. I believe that nothing worth doing comes easily. I am therefore motivated by the “bigger picture” and have long term goals having faith that down the track the quality of our science will be recognized. The Rutherford Medal from The Royal Society of New Zealand is awarded for long term contributions to science and technology in New Zealand so this success resulted from many years of hard work with my research team.

•    What scientific discovery would you most like to have been responsible for?
We have a drug candidate NNZ2566 that is in phase 2b clinical trial for traumatic brain injury. We provided the medicinal chemistry expertise for Neuren Pharmaceuticals to develop this synthetic drug candidate. I really hope NNZ2566 makes it to the market.

•    You have recently become an Associate Editor for Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry. What are you looking forward to most about your new role?
I am looking forward to interacting with the synthetic community more and learning more about the chemistry people are doing. The world of synthesis is vast and it is hard to keep up with what everyone is doing.

•    What advice would you give to the students who will be the next generation of scientists?
I tell my young students to do the science you like doing. I also tell them to stick to their science and not get distracted.

•   What would you be if you weren’t a scientist?
I have thought about this often but actually still can’t think about anything better than being a synthetic organic chemist! We get to interact with lots of other scientists and have fun making new molecules for a range of different exciting applications – mainly for drug discovery and as new materials.

Margaret’s recent articles include:
The Kulinkovich hydroxycyclopropanation reaction in natural product synthesis
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2012,10, 7649-7665

Enantioselective synthesis of C-linked spiroacetal-triazoles as privileged natural product-like scaffolds
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2012,10, 5993-6002

Synthesis of glycosylated 5-hydroxylysine, an important amino acid present in collagen-like proteins such as adiponectin
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2012,10, 1137-1144

If you would like to submit an article to OBC, to be handled by Margaret, you can do so here on our submissions platform.

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