Event

"Chemistry Innovation and Biological Discovery through Natural Product Total Synthesis"

-This talk will focus on our recent efforts in function and efficiency-driven total synthesis of medicinally important natural products. The target molecules include macrolides, alkaloids, and polycyclic diterpenoids. Novel and enabling synthetic strategies and methodologies toward these target molecules will be highlighted. Biological evaluation and target identification of the selected natural products and their analogs will be discussed as well. These biological endeavors have led us to the exciting territories of targeting the previously undruggable disease proteins via small-molecule inhibition and targeted protein degradation. Overall, this talk will emphasize how we use natural product total synthesis to achieve chemistry innovation and biological discovery.

Biosketch:

Dr. Mingji Dai is currently the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Chemistry at Emory University. Mingji grew up in a small village in Sichuan, China. He received his B.S. degree from Peking University in 2002. After two years’ research with Professors Zhen Yang and Jiahua Chen in the same university, he went to New York City in 2004 and pursued graduate study under the guidance of Professor Samuel J. Danishefsky at Columbia University. After earning his Ph.D. degree in 2009, he took a postdoctoral position in the laboratory of Professor Stuart L. Schreiber at Harvard University and the Broad Institute. In August 2012, he began his independent career as an assistant professor in the Chemistry Department and Center for Cancer Research of Purdue University. He was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2018 and full professor in 2020. While at Purdue Chemistry, he served as the Organic Division Head and Equity Advisor from 2020 to 2022. He also served as a Program Co-Leader of the Purdue Center for Cancer Research and as Associated Director of the Purdue Drug Discovery Training Program (NIH T32). In August 2022, he was recruited to Emory University as the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Chemistry. His lab focuses on developing new strategies and methodologies for the synthesis of complex natural products and other medicinally important molecules. His recent awards include the 2022 Purdue College of Science Research Award, the 2020 Arthur E. Kelly Undergraduate Teaching Award, the 2018 Amgen Young Investigators’ Award, the 2017 Chinese-American Chemistry & Chemical Biology Professors Association (CAPA) Distinguished Junior Faculty Award, the 2016 Eli Lilly Grantee Award, the NSF CAREER Award, the 2015 Organic Letters Outstanding Author of the Year Lectureship Award, the 2015 Thieme Chemistry Journal Award, etc.

https://winshipcancer.emory.edu/profiles/dai-mingji.php

Host Prof. Dirk Trauner