Professor Ryan Shenvi, The Scripps Research Institute
S.G. Mudd Building
Stanford University
"Chemical Synthesis of Secondary Metabolites"
About the Seminar:
Nature is a library. Organisms comprise and produce collections of molecules unparalleled in number and diversity. Unfortunately, Nature is not very organized, at least not for drug development. Molecules with promising therapeutic profiles can be buried among more abundant cellular products. Or, if abundant and easily purified, these molecules can be too complex for a rational medicinal chemistry campaign. Our laboratory develops chemistry to assemble simple chemical feedstocks into secondary metabolites that present interesting biological questions or hold therapeutic potential.
About the Speaker:
Ryan was born in 1981 in Wilmington, Delaware. He received his B.S. degree in chemistry from Penn State University, where he was a research student with John Desjarlais and Ray Funk. He earned his Ph.D. as an NDSEG predoctoral fellow with Phil Baran at The Scripps Research Institute, and then joined the laboratory of E. J. Corey at Harvard University as an NIH postdoctoral fellow. He began his independent career in 2010 at The Scripps Research Institute where he is now a tenured Associate Professor.