Professor Michael Jung, UCLA’s Walter and Shirley Wang Chair in Medicinal Drug Discovery, will present the Academic Senate’s 130th Faculty Research Lecture on Friday, June 6, 2025, at 2:00 p.m. in Schoenberg Hall.
In his lecture, titled “Drug Discovery in Academia: Some Success Stories,” Jung will describe the process of medicinal chemistry and drug discovery in academia and highlight success stories that led to the FDA-approved drugs that he developed. His lecture will be followed by a reception.
The Faculty Research Lecture — a UCLA tradition since 1925 — is free and open to the public. Please RSVP here if you’d like to attend. For those unable to join in person, the event will be recorded and posted on the UCLA Research and Creative Activities website afterwards. For inquiries, please email: ovcr@conet.ucla.edu.
Jung has made exceptional contributions to UCLA in the areas of research, teaching, and service. In the past few years, he has had brilliant success in the development of drugs for prostate cancer. UCLA has benefited tremendously from Jung’s accomplishments, receiving more than $1.1B from selling the patent rights to the prostate cancer drug Xtandi. His second drug, Erleada, also for prostate cancer, was approved in 2018. The royalties from that drug are also helping with fellowships and research at UCLA. He has co-founded 14 biotech companies and serves as a consultant or scientific advisory board member for several pharmaceutical and biotech firms. Currently four drugs from his lab are in phase 1 or phase 2 clinical trials. Most recently he was awarded of the 2025 National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Award for Chemistry in Service to Society and the 2025 Edward E. Smissman Award from the ACS Division of Medicinal Chemistry. In August 2024, Jung was inducted into the ACS Division of Medicinal Chemistry Hall of Fame. His other recent awards and honors include the IUPAC-Richter Prize in Medicinal Chemistry in 2022 and the AACR Outstanding Achievement in Chemistry in Cancer Research Award in 2019.
In 2017, Jung and his wife, Alice, endowed the Michael and Alice Jung Chair in Medicinal Chemistry and Drug Discovery to enable UCLA to hire and support future scientists/educators.
Past recipients of Faculty Research Lectureship from the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry include William G. Young (1947), Saul Winstein (1955), Donald J. Cram (1970), Paul D. Boyer (1982), David Eisenberg (1989), Mostafa A. El-Sayed (1991), M. Frederick Hawthorne (1995), Kendall N. Houk (1998), Steven G. Clarke (2009), and Richard Kaner (2013).
Penny Jennings, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, penjen@g.ucla.edu.
