On September 5, 2015 in the morning 9:00，with the invitation of Prof. Zhen Yang and Prof. Yun-Dong Wu, Prof. Zhong-Yin Zhang, from Indiana University, gave us a great academic report in E104.

Prof. Zhang is the chairman of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He had organized a lot of symposiums or conferences on protein phosphatases, including the FASEB Summer Conference. The title of Prof. Zhang’s report is “Drugging the Undruggable: Targeting Protein Tyrosine Phosphatases for Novel Therapeutic Agents”. Protein tyrosine phosphatases (PTPs) have been garnering attention as potential therapeutic targets. Unfortunately, these targets are often characterized as being ‘undruggable’. Prof. Zhang and his team are working on a novel approach for the design of potent and specific PTP inhibitors by tethering appropriately functionalized moieties to a nonhydrolyzable pTyr mimetic in order to engage both the active site and nearby unique peripheral binding pockets. Additionally, they try to create a ‘PTP-based drug discovery platform’.
After the report, Prof. Zhang discussed with us actively to let us know the application of protein phosphatases-based drug design.