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UCLA Chemistry and Biochemistry Newsletter

The Spring 2013 issue of UCLA Chemistry and Biochemistry Newsletter is now available!

In this issue, we feature numerous awards received by our faculty, exciting events hosted by our department, and how research on "The Super Supercapacitor" by graduate student Maher El-Kady and Prof. Ric Kaner may change the world! We also have wonderful stories of our Alumni & Friends, including a feature on Raymond (Class of '43) & Dorothy Wilson and Robert McMahon (Class of '85).

Download now to find out more!

The department would like to thank everyone who has participated in the production of this newsletter. A special thanks goes to Kady Bell-Garcia, who has volunteered many hours of service as a writer and editor to help make this possible.

2013 Glenn T. Seaborg Medalist: Professor Kendall N. Houk

We are pleased to announce that the 2013 Glenn T. Seaborg Medal will be awarded to Professor Kendall N. Houk. The date for the 2013 Seaborg Symposium & Medal Award dinner is Saturday, October 26, 2013 at CNSI (Symposium & Poster Session) and Covel Commons (Medal Award Dinner).    

K. N. Houk received A.B., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees at Harvard, working with R. B. Woodward as a graduate student in the area of experimental tests of orbital symmetry selection rules. He taught at Louisiana State University, the University of Pittsburgh, and UCLA since 1986. From 1988-1990, he was Director of the Chemistry Division of the National Science Foundation. He was Chairman of the UCLA Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry from 1991-1994, and became the Saul Winstein Chair in Organic Chemistry in 2009.

Professor Houk is an authority on theoretical and computational organic chemistry, beginning as an experimental organic chemist and now on the forefront of the application of computation and theory to understand and predict chemical and biological reactivity. He collaborates prodigiously with chemists all over the world and has published nearly 900 articles and given named lectures throughout the US.

Among his honors are the von Humboldt Foundation U.S. Senior Scientist Award, and Arthur C. Cope Scholar, James Flack Norris Award in Physical Organic Chemistry, Computers in Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences Award, the Tolman Medal, and the Arthur C. Cope Award, all from the American Chemical Society. He was awarded the Schrödinger Medal of the WATOC, the Faculty Research Lectureship at UCLA, the Bruylants Chair from the University of Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium, the Dr. rer. nat. h. c. from the University of Essen, Germany, an Erskine Fellowship in New Zealand, a Lady Davis Fellow at the Technion in Haifa, Israel, a JSPS Fellow in Japan and this year won the Robert Robinson Award of the UK Royal Society of Chemistry. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences. He has been named as Fellow of the AAAS, WATOC, ACS, and RSC.

Ken Houk has served on the boards of a variety of funding agencies and journals, including NIH Study Sections and the PRF Advisory Board. He was Chair of the Chemistry Section of the AAAS, and is now a Senior Editor of Accounts of Chemical Research. He was Director of the UCLA Chemistry-Biology Interface Training Program from 1999 until 2011, and is a member of the UCLA Molecular Biology Institute and California NanoSystems Institute.

For any questions regarding the Seaborg Symposium & Medal Award Dinner, please contact Jin Lee or via phone at 310-825-4405.

Pyridynes Provide Access to Drug-Like Compounds


Medications intended to treat innumerable disorders and diseases are introduced into the market on a regular basis, but the process of drug discovery is long and limited by the tools at a chemist’s disposal. This often amounts to the types of chemical reactions chemists are able to run to build new molecular structures that could potentially become drugs.

Many commercially available drugs contain organic molecules known as heterocycles, and one of the most common heterocycles prevalent in drugs is called the pyridine ring. Over 100 medications on the market today include pyridine rings, such as Lunesta, commonly used to treat insomnia, Actos, commonly used to treat Type II diabetes, Nexium, commonly used to treat acid reflux, and Singulair, commonly used to treat asthma. By making compounds called "pyridynes," Professor Neil Garg and Adam Goetz, a Ph.D. candidate in Garg’s laboratory, have introduced a new tool to allow chemists to construct various molecular structures that can potentially aid in future drug discovery. This research was published online in Nature Chemistry on November 25.

"You need basic chemistry to be able to access potential drugs, and we think this is a very useful tool that drug companies will be able to use to make new chemicals that they have not been able to make before," Garg said.

Pyridine rings consist of six atoms that can be numbered for classification purposes. Garg and Goetz wanted to introduce new arrangements of atoms, or substituents, on pyridine rings in a controlled process, in order to form new molecular structures to aid chemists in drug discovery. They aimed at producing 3,4-pyridynes, in which the third and fourth atoms in a pyridine ring are attached to one another by a very reactive triple bond. "The high reactivity of the pyridyne allows for many possible chemical reactions," Garg said.

Although chemists have been producing these types of pyridynes for over 30 years, Garg and Goetz recognized some limitations in their methods, as they were not user-friendly, not often used in drug discovery, and were more likely to result in two, rather than one, product, which is not helpful to those trying to make very specific compounds. To simplify the process, Garg and Goetz prepared "pyridyne precursors," which are stable chemicals that can be stored in bottles. Pyridyne precursors can be put into chemical reactions to be converted into pyridynes. They can then be used to quickly react with another ingredient, which can be chosen by the researcher, to form a new product. Since the last ingredient will vary in different reactions, according to a chemist’s preference, many new substituted pyridines can be made.

Garg compared chemical reactions and the process of making substituted pyridines to preparing a meal, in which ingredients are added to a pot to produce a flavorful product. "You can think of pyridynes as being the key flavors that come out when ingredients are simmering together," Garg said.

Garg and Goetz are currently focused on making their pyridyne precursors commercially available. A leading chemical supplier has already purchased three compounds to test market viability, the first step toward drug companies widely using pyridynes in drug discovery.

"There’s a popular quote by one of the former directors of the National Institutes of Health, and he said that the No. 1 stumbling block in drug discovery is synthetic organic chemistry," Garg said. "I think a lot of industrial researchers agree. We’re good at synthetic organic chemistry, but we will always need new ways to build molecules, and new ways to build molecules that have never been made before. Our pyridyne chemistry is a contribution along those lines."

2012 Seaborg Symposium Lecture Videos Available Online


On Friday, December 7, 2012, the UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry,UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, and UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine presented a joint symposium honoring Dr. Harold Varmus, Director of National Cancer Institute and 1989 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine.  

The lecture videos from the symposium can be viewed at www.seaborg.ucla.edu.

The Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry Newsletter - 2012 Fall Issue

UCLA Chemistry Newsletter Fall 2012

Check out our Fall 2012 issue of UCLA Chemistry and Biochemistry Newsletter, with up-to-date information on 2012-2013 upcoming Lecture series.  Read our new department chair's message with exciting news and changes.   In this issue, we also feature numerous awards received by our faculty(Prof. Xiangfeng Duan, Prof. Neil Garg, Prof. Sabeeha Merchant, Prof. Yi Tang, Prof. Bouchard, to name a few.), as well as noteworthy achievement by our students, such as Mr. Alexander Huters receiving the Bristol-Myers Squibb Graduate Fellowship, or Mr.  Adam Goetz Receiving the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry Graduate Fellowship.  Download and read more about our improved summer research program.

Download Newsletter >>

Chemistry & Biochemistry NewsLetter - Spring 2012

 

In this issue, we feature a number of our distinguished faculty members receiving prominent awards including:

  • Dr. Sabeeha Merchant, who was elected to the prestigious National Academy of  Science
  • Professor Joan Valentine, who was admitted to the Royal Society of Chemisty as a Honorary Fellow
  • Professor Kendall Houk, who was awarded the 2012 Robert Robinson Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry
  • Professor Xiangfend Duan, who received a 2012 Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award
  • Dr. Neil Garg, who was awarded Four Early Career Award including Alfred Sloan Foundation, and more

Our graduate fellows are just as active, receiving such a honors as Journal of Biological Chemistry Young Investigator's award(Congratulations to Erin Greiner.)  Our congratulation also goes to Mr. Julio Darcy who have earned a second prize at the annual National Collegiate Inventor's competition sponsored in part by the UD Patent and Trademark Office.

Read our featured article on our faculty, Dr. Jorge Torres, who discovered suppressing STARD9 protein could be a novel a strategy to fight off certain kind of cancer cells. A newly found STARD9 protein helps to regulate cell division, and could potentially used to stop malignant cells from dividing. His study was published in the December 9, 2011 issue of Cell.

Our achievements and awards are numerous.  Find out more by Downloading our newsletter. 

UCLA Chemistry and Biochemistry Newsletter - Sping 2012   2012 Chemistry and Biochemistry Newsletter

 

 

A Very Short Introduction to the Periodic Table

Eric Scerri‘s new book, A Very Short Introduction to the Periodic Table, published by Oxford University Press, was reviewed in the UK's prestigious daily newspaper,The Guardian.

 

The book is part of OUP's series of Very Short Introductions which now includes about 300 titles.

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