Click Chemistry in Biology and Medicine: New Developments and Strategies

Speakers

Organizers

Peng Wu, PhD

Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Peng Wu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and the Director of the newly established Chemical Biology Core Facility at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He received his doctorate from the Scripps Research Institute in 2005 under the guidance of Professor K. Barry Sharpless. From September 2004 to early 2005, he was a visiting student in the laboratory of Professor Craig J. Hawker at IBM Almaden Research Center and at the University of California, Santa Barbara. From August 2005 to September 2008, Dr. Wu was a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Professor Carolyn R. Bertozzi at the University of California, Berkeley. Joining the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in October 2008, Dr. Wu is developing a research program at the interface of chemistry and biology, with a focus on the invention of new tools for studying protein glycosylation, especially those related to human disease.

Jennifer Henry, PhD

The New York Academy of Sciences

Keynote Speakers

Jim Paulson, PhD

The Scripps Research Institute

James C. Paulson obtained his PhD (Biochemistry) in 1974 from the University of Illinois at Champaign–Urbana, and did post-doctoral work at Duke University Medical Centre, in Durham, North Carolina from 1974–78. From 1978–1990 he rose from Assistant Professor to full Professor and vice-chair in the Department of Biological Chemistry at the UCLA School of Medicine where he developed an interest in analysis of receptor specificity of influenza viruses from different host species. From 1990–1999 he served as Vice President and Member Board of Directors of Cytel Corporation, La Jolla, CA. From 1999–present he has been Professor at the Scripps Research Institute, in La Jolla, California, where he is currently Chair of the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology with joint appointments in the Departments of Chemical Physiology, and Immunology and Microbial Sciences. His current research interests include the roles of glycan binding proteins in the modulation of immune cell signaling, and the receptor specificity of mammalian and animal influenza viruses.

K. Barry Sharpless, PhD

The Scripps Research Institute

Descended from one of the original land purchasers in William Penn’s New World venture, K. Barry Sharpless received a Quaker education at the Friends Central School, Haverford, Pennsylvania. In 1963 he graduated from Dartmouth College, where he was introduced, most fortuitously, to the wonders of chemistry by T. A. Spencer. Following graduate research with E. E. van Tamelen at Stanford University, Sharpless completed postdoctoral studies with J. P. Collman, also at Stanford, and at Harvard University with Konrad Bloch. Sharpless set up his own laboratory in 1970 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Except for several years in the 1970s when he was a member of Stanford’s chemistry faculty, Sharpless remained at MIT until moving to the Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in 1990. At TSRI he is W. M. Keck Professor of Chemistry and a member of the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology. In 2011 Thomson Reuters named the top 100 chemists whose papers published in the first decade of the 21st Century achieved the highest citation impact scores: Sharpless was #4.

Speakers

Yimon Aye, PhD

Cornell University

Yimon Aye received her undergraduate degree in Chemistry from University of Oxford, UK, in 2004; and her doctoral degree in Organic Chemistry from Harvard University, MA, USA, in 2009 (under the guidance of Professor David Evans). As a Damon Runyon cancer research postdoctoral fellow, she received training in mechanistic biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA, USA (mentored by Professor JoAnne Stubbe). She is presently the Milstein junior faculty fellow and assistant professor at the Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, USA, with secondary appointment at the Department of Biochemistry, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY, USA. The Aye Lab at Cornell University was established in July 2012 and was recently recognized by the NSF CAREER and the Beckman Young Investigator Awards.

David A. Spiegel, MD, PhD

Yale University

David Spiegel, MD, PhD is an Associate Professor at Yale University with appointments in the departments of Chemistry and Pharmacology. He graduated Magna Cum Laude in Chemistry from Harvard University in 1995, having worked in the laboratory of Professor Yoshito Kishi. He then went on to pursue a combined MD/PhD degree at the Yale University MD/PhD program, where he worked in the laboratory of Professor John L. Wood, focusing on synthetic organic chemistry, and graduating in 2005. After a brief postdoctoral stint at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT under Professor Stuart L. Schreiber, Professor Spiegel started his independent academic career at Yale University in 2007.

The Spiegel research group (www.spiegelgroup.yale.edu) focuses in the area of Synthetic Immunology, which involves the development of novel synthetic systems for modulating and manipulating immune function. Specific disease areas of interest include prostate cancer, HIV, Gram-positive bacteria, and aging. Professor Spiegel has served as a consultant for International Flavors and Fragrances, Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Pharmaseq. He has also been recognized with various awards and honors, including the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the Department of Defense Era of Hope Scholar Award, the Ellison Medical Foundation New Scholar Award in Aging Research, the Novartis Early Career Award in Organic Chemistry, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Grand Challenges Explorations Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, and others.

Mingxuan Wu, MS

Princeton University

Mingxuan Wu was born in Zhengzhou, the capitol city of Henan Province in central China. He received his BS in biotechnology and MS in microbiology from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Under the direction of Professor Huchen Zhou in School of Pharmacy, he synthesized sugar nucleotides to study antibiotic glycosylation and diterpenoid probes to elucidate the mechanism of leukemia cells differentiation. In 2010, he joined Fiedler lab in Department of Chemistry at Princeton University to study diphosphoinositol polyphosphate signaling by non-hydrolyzable analogs and affinity reagents.

Peng Wu, PhD

Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Peng Wu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and the Director of the newly established Chemical Biology Core Facility at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He received his doctorate from the Scripps Research Institute in 2005 under the guidance of Professor K. Barry Sharpless. From September 2004 to early 2005, he was a visiting student in the laboratory of Professor Craig J. Hawker at IBM Almaden Research Center and at the University of California, Santa Barbara. From August 2005 to September 2008, Dr. Wu was a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Professor Carolyn R. Bertozzi at the University of California, Berkeley. Joining the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in October 2008, Dr. Wu is developing a research program at the interface of chemistry and biology, with a focus on the invention of new tools for studying protein glycosylation, especially those related to human disease.