26th Annual Stauffer Lectureship (Day 2 of 2): Professor Phil Baran, Scripps Research
26th Annual Stauffer Lectureship (Day 2 of 2): Professor Phil Baran, Scripps Research (Host: Noah Burns)
**This seminar is only available for virtual attendance.**
"Simplifying Oligonucleotide Synthesis"
About the Seminar
While the notion of an "ideal synthesis” in the context of natural products was described as early as the 1970s, the application of these same principles to the molecules of life remains underexplored. To this end, critical evaluation of the strategies used in phosphorothioate oligonucleotide synthesis reveals a persistent adherence to a reactive and useful standard (phosphoramidite) but one that falls short of the ideality in terms of redox, step, and atom economy. This discussion will highlight our efforts in the reinvestigation of oligonucleotide construction with an eye toward challenging the lore of the field.
About the Speaker
Phil Baran was born in 1977 in Denville, New Jersey. He received his B.S. in chemistry from NYU in 1997, his Ph.D. The Scripps Research Institute in 2001, and from 2001-2003 he was an NIH-postdoctoral fellow at Harvard. His independent career began at Scripps in the summer of 2003. Phil has published over 220 scientific articles, several patents, and has been the recipient of several ACS awards such as the Corey (2015), Pure Chemistry (2010), Fresenius (2006), and Nobel Laureate Signature (2003), and several international distinctions such as the Hirata Gold Medal and Mukaiyama Prize (Japan), the RSC award in Synthesis (UK), the Sackler Prize (Israel), and the Janssen Prize (Belgium). In 2013 he was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow, in 2015 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 2016 he was awarded the Blavatnik National Award, and in 2017, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, USA. He has delivered hundreds of lectures around the world and consults for numerous companies such as Bristol-Myers Squibb and Gilead. He currently serves as a scientific advisory board member for Eisai, Alkermes, Nutcracker, Quanta and AsymChem. In 2016 he was appointed as an Associate Editor for the Journal of the American Chemical Society. He co-founded Sirenas Marine Discovery (2012), Vividion Therapeutics (2016), Elsie Biotechnologies (2021), and Elima Therapeutics (2022). In 2013 he co-authored The Portable Chemist’s Consultant, an interactive book published on the iBooks store along with his graduate class in Heterocyclic Chemistry (viewable on YouTube). The Baran laboratory is committed to identifying areas of chemical synthesis that can have a dramatic impact on the rate of drug discovery and development. This is achieved both through the development of practical total syntheses of complex natural products (such as terpenes, alkaloids, peptides, and oligonucleotides) and by inventing reactions which can dramatically simplify retrosynthesis.
Outside of the lab, Phil enjoys spending time with his wife Ana and three young children (Lucia, Leah, and Manuel).