On April 19, 2019, Prof. Masayuki Inoue of the University of Tokyo visited SCBB as the winner of the “Pharmaron lecture Award” and gave an academic report entitled “Total Synthesis and Biological Evaluation of Peptide Natural Products” at the classroom E-104. Our teachers and students actively participated in the report and had in-depth exchanges and discussions with Professor Inoue.
Prof. Inoue’s research group mainly focuses on the total synthesis of natural products such as Zaragozic Acid C, Asimicin and Lysocin E. First of all, Prof. Inoue described the removal of carbonyl compounds to construct free radical intermediates, which can successfully participate in the construction of target products. In particular, the reaction mechanism has been fully elucidated by Prof. Inoue’s innovative research. In addition, the application of free radical coupling and free radical dimerization in the synthesis of natural products Zaragozic Acid C and Asimicin is introduced in detail. Moreover, the efficient introduction of side chains and the special construction methodology of chirality are also demonstrated. In the report, Prof. Inoue gave us a detailed description of the synthetic route of these molecules and detailed description of the important reactions. Finally, Prof. Inoue demonstrated the structure-activity relationship of the novel antibiotic polypeptide Lysocin E, the high-throughput screening of synthetic analogs and the novel methodologies for screening active analogs.
During the Q&A section of this particular Pharmaron lecture, the teachers and students asked the enthusiastic questions, and Prof. Inoue gave many detailed and profound answers that indeed brought great inspiration to the students.
At the end of the lecture, Professor Ye Tao, Deputy Dean of SCBB, presented the Pharmaron Lecture Award to Professor Inoue. Later, Professor Inoue had a lunch conversation with the students. During the discussion, Professor Inoue said: "China's scientific research is in a rising stage." At the same time, he encouraged the students to learn from the scientific setbacks, improve deep understanding of the subject, and optimistically face the challenges in academic work and life.
Lecture by professor Inoue
Audience questions
Professor Inoue gets the pharmaron lecture award
Brief introduction of speaker：
Masayuki Inoue was born in Tokyo in 1971. He received a B.Sc. degree in Chemistry from The University of Tokyo in 1993. In 1998, he obtained his Ph.D. from the same university, working under the supervision of Prof. Kazuo Tachibana. After spending two years with Prof. Samuel. J. Danishefsky at the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research (1998-2000), he joined the Graduate School of Science at Tohoku University as an assistant professor in the research group of Prof. Masahiro Hirama. He was promoted to associate professor in 2004. In 2007, he moved to The University of Tokyo as a full professor. He has been honored with the First Merck-Banyu Lectureship Award (2004), Novartis Chemistry Lectureship 2008/2009, 5th JSPS Prize (2008), the Mukaiyama Award (2014), Swiss Chemical Society Lectureship Award (2017), JOC Lectureship Award (2018), and The Yomiuri Techno Forum Gold Medal Prize (2018). His research interests include the synthesis, design and study of biologically important molecules, with particular emphasis on the total synthesis of structurally complex natural products.
