Seminars This Week

Today is the day that I'm proud to be hosting Scott Snyder from Columbia University for his seminar at noon titled "Lessons in Chemoselectivity: Total Synthesis of Polyphenolic Natural Products" in 7-135 Weaver-Densford Hall. Scott and I overlapped at Scripps for a couple years, so it will be great to hear about the success of his independent research program at Columbia.

Alison Frontier from the University of Rochester will then be on campus this Wednesday and Thursday for the latest Abbott Workshop Series in Synthetic Organic and Medicinal Chemistry hosted by the Department of Chemistry. Her seminar, "New Twists in Nazarov Cyclization Chemistry," will be on Wednesday at 4:15 pm in 331 Smith Hall. The workshop discussion will be held on Thursday, July 14 at 10:00 am in 114 Science Teaching & Student Services. This will be followed by a pizza lunch, and the Fecik group meets with Alison from 1:30-2:15 pm.

David Sherman - Abbott Workshop Recap

Professor David Sherman, University of Michigan

Abbott Workshop in Synthetic Organic Medicinal Chemistry

Friday, May 20 and Saturday, May 21, 2011

I had the distinct privilege of hosting my friend and collaborator, Professor David Sherman, from the University of Michigan on May 20 and 21 for the Abbott Workshop in Synthetic Organic Medicinal Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry. This was David's first seminar presentation at Minnesota since he left here for Michigan in 2003. The Abbott Workshop is a fantastic seminar series since it provides graduate students with extensive opportunities for interacting with prominent speakers in small groups and in a discussion-based workshop session.

David address the audience during his Friday afternoon seminar.

David with former postdocs Christine Salomon and Courtney Aldrich.

Following the usual day of visiting with chemistry faculty, lunch with students, and participation in the weekly Synthesis Literature Meeting, David presented his Friday afternoon seminar, "Novel Drug Leads from Natural Products and Their Derivation from Microbial and Biosynthetic Diversity." He began with an overview of the changes that have taken place in studying bacterial genetics and secondary metabolism and a description of his discovery efforts in Costa Rica as a teaser for the Saturday workshop. David then led the audience through some of his work on polyketide biosynthesis in three parts. First was a project-spanning walk through his ground-breaking work on pikromycin biosynthesis, subtitled "Interrogating Molecular Specificity in Modular PKSs." Having collaborated with David on much of this research, it was fascinating to realize how much has been accomplished in the study of macrolide antibiotics, yet also exciting at the opportunities that remain. The second part, "Biosynthetic P450s as a Tool for C–H Bond Activation," described his work in using PikC, a P450 tailoring enzyme in pikromycin biosynthesis, for the oxidation of a remarkable variety of non-natural substrates. Finally, new research that has been accepted for publication in Nature Chemistry on the unusual biosynthesis of tirandamycins was presented to close the talk.

Friday dinner at Sen Yai Sen Lek. L–r: Christine Salomon, Andy Harned, Tom Hoye, Chris Douglas, David Sherman.

Christine Salomon and Courtney Aldrich, both former postdocs of David's, and I chatted with David for a while after his talk, and I briefly showed him around our new labs in the 717 Delaware Building before heading to dinner at Sen Yai Sen Lek. David, Christine, Tom Hoye, Andy Harned, Chris Douglas, and I shared some delightful Thai food and a lot of laughs over David's stories from collecting expeditions in Costa Rica.

David presents his Saturday morning workshop discussion.

I met David for breakfast at Starbuck's on Saturday morning, and this offered us our first opportunity to catch up with each other and discuss some future project ideas. Beginning at 10 am, David led the packed room in a two and a half hour discussion about natural products discovery and his International Cooperative Biodiversity Group, which encompasses synergistic collaborations with Giselle Tamayo (INBio, Costa Rica), Jon Clardy (Harvard Medical School), Phil Crews (UC-Santa Cruz), Verenium (San Diego), the Joint Genome Institute (Berkeley), and Eisai. As you can imagine, the scope and objectives of the group are huge and ambitious. His informal presentation led into discussions about beetles and bioenergy production, marine sample collecting, political issues, and the study of symbiont biosynthetic pathways, including that of ET-743 (aka ecteinascidin 743, trabectedin, Yondelis). The pizza lunch arrived too quickly, and everyone seemed to enjoy the unique discussion. David's afternoon was spent meeting individually with the Fecik, Hoye, Harned, and Douglas research groups, and his visit ended with dinner Saturday evening with a group of students.


Overall, the two days with David were invigorating and stimulating, and his unique perspectives on modern natural products research were beneficial to all.


The next Abbott Workshop will be July 13 and 14, when the Department of Chemistry will be hosting Professor Alison Frontier (University of Rochester).

Seminars This Week

There’s a couple events of interest this week. The 2011 Research Symposium of the Masonic Cancer Center will be held from 9–3:30 this Wednesday, May 18 at the Great Hall in Coffman Memorial Union. This annual symposium highlights the breadth of great work going on here at the cancer center, and this year is no exception. Neal Rosen from the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center kicks things off with the keynote address, "Oncoprotein-feedback Inhibition of Signaling—Biologic and Therapeutic Implications", at 9:30, followed by a poster session and lunch. The afternoon session features researchers from Minnesota, including one by our medicinal chemistry colleague, Chengguo Xing, who will be presenting a talk entitled “An Anticancer Drug Candidate against Drug-resistant Leukemia and Its Potential Mechanism of Action.” You can view the entire agenda here.

On Friday and Saturday, May 20 and 21, I’m delighted to be hosting my collaborator and friend, David Sherman (University of Michigan), in the Department of Chemistry for the Abbott Workshop in Synthetic Organic Medicinal Chemistry. David is world-renowned for his work in studying natural product biosynthesis, combinatorial biosynthesis, and metabolic engineering. David’s lecture, “Novel Drug Leads from Natural Products and their Derivation from Microbial and Biosynthetic Diversity”, will be held at 4:15 on Friday, May 20 in 331 Smith Hall. The more informal workshop session will be held from 10–12:30 on Saturday, May 21 in 117/119 Smith Hall.