The Inaugural Magomedov-Shcherbinina Memorial Prize and Lectureship
Room 473, Hutchison Hall
There will be a reception following the award presentation and lecture in the Green Carpet Lounge of Hutchison Hall.
Awardee: Sergey Kozmin
Lecture Title: Practical Organic Synthesis to Unravel Chemical Biology of Complex Natural Products
Lecture Abstract: Many bioactive natural products have evolved to modulate the function of individual proteins in living organisms with high potency and exquisite selectivity. One of the objectives of the Kozmin group’s research program is to elucidate the mechanism of action of complex natural products at the molecular level. Such compounds are discovered most frequently through phetotypic cell-based screening. Due to the significant progress in isolation and structure elucidation of new natural products, there is an increasing demand on the efficiency of modern organic synthesis, which is required to provide practical access to rare and biosynthetically inaccessible secondary metabolites in order to enable their biological and pharmacological evaluation, en route to the ultimate development of new therapeutic agents. Professor Kozmin will discuss how the efficient chemical synthesis of complex natural products can enable identification of cellular targets of such compounds in several areas of cell biology, including cytokinesis, protein synthesis and energy metabolism.
Awardee Biography: Sergey A. Kozmin received his Undergraduate Diploma at the Moscow State University in 1993. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1998 at the University of Chicago with Viresh H. Rawal, and completed postdoctoral studies at the University of Pennsylvania with Amos B. Smith, III in 2000. He began his independent academic career at the University of Chicago as an Assistant Professor; in 2006 he was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor. Kozmin has been recognized as an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, an American Cancer Society Research Scholar, an Amgen Young Investigator, GlaxoSmithKline Chemistry Research Scholar, a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar and a recipient of the NSF CAREER award. The main objective of Kozmin’s research program is to advance the chemistry and chemical biology of natural products and to develop small-molecule libraries that rival the sophistication of naturally occurring secondary metabolites. This effort, which brings together complementary expertise in organic synthesis, biochemistry, cell biology and pharmacology, enables the identification of an arsenal of new small-molecule agents and disease-related targets and pathways for basic and translational biomedical research.