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Education:

• B.S. 1997 Chemistry Peking University
• M.S. 1999 Chemistry New York University
• Ph.D. 2005 Organic Chemistry Stanford University
• Postdoc 2007 Chemical Biology Harvard University

Overview

In the summer of 2007, Dr. Weiping Tang moved to The Division of Pharmaceutical Sciences at UW-Madison as an assistant professor. His lab focuses on organic synthesis and chemical biology. Please visit his lab website (link on the left) for updated information.

Chemistry Projects:
This laboratory is interested in developing efficient synthetic methods that are fundamentally important for both basic research and pharmaceutical industry, such as stereoselective hydroamination of alkenes, stereoselective construction of carbon-halogen bonds, and activation of C-C σ-bonds of strained ring systems. We will apply these methods in the synthesis of biologically active natural products and pharmaceutical agents.

a) Nitrogen-containing compounds are very widely present in nature and pharmaceutical agents. The direct addition of amines to olefins, known as hydroamination, would be a superior atom-economical process in terms of an optimum material balance. Hydroaminaiton of olefin was listed as one of the "Top Ten Challenges for Catalysis". Biologically active nitrogen-containing compounds (alkaloids) will be prepared using the hydroaminaiton methodology developed in this laboratory.

b) The catalytic asymmetric functionalization of alkenes is one of the most influential fields in modern synthetic organic chemistry today, and it has been realized preeminently through asymmetric epoxidation, dihydroxylation, and hydrogenation. We propose to functionalize olefins by halogen promoted asymmetric nucleophilic additions using multifunctional catalysts. Various biologically active natural products can be synthesized efficiently and stereoselectively using this methodology.

c) Selective cleavage and subsequent elaboration of C-C σ-bonds into complex molecules represents an important and fundamental challenge in chemistry and it can potentially broaden our approach to synthetic targets. Relief of ring strain provides favorable conditions for activating C-C σ-bonds. We will explore several new transition-metal catalyzed reactions for the stereo-selective preparation of complex hetero- and carbocycles via activation of C-C σ-bonds in strained ring systems.



Chemical Biology Projects:
We are interested in synthesizing chemical probes for chromatin modifying enzymes using methodologies developed in our laboratory.

Eukaryotes package their genome into nucleosomes, where 146-149 base pairs of DNA are tightly wrapped around a histone core. The affinity of histones for DNA is mainly controlled by histone modifications. Many different residues on histones can be covalently modified by chromatin modifying enzymes, such as histone methyltransferases (HMT), histone demethylases (HDM), histone acetyltransferases (HAT), and histone deacetylases (HDAC). Modifications and the positioning of histones organize the genome into either open or condensed chromatin and thus regulate the accessibility of DNA for diverse cellular processes, from transcription, replication, to DNA repair. Discovery of specific chemical probes for chromatin modifying enzymes (HMT, HDM, HAT, and HDAC) are important for understanding numerous cellular events such as stem cell differentiation and the treatment of diseases such as cancer. We will design selective chemical probes based on enzymatic mechanisms, synthesize them using methodologies developed in our laboratory, and identify them by employing cell-based high throughput screens (HTS). Through collaborations with colleagues in the School of Pharmacy, these chemical probes can potentially be turned into regenerative medicine or anti-cancer drugs.

Highlighted Publications:

• "Asymmetric Synthesis of Quaternary Centers. Total Synthesis of (-)-Malyngolide" Trost, B. M.; Tang, W.; Schulte, J. L. Org. Lett. 2000, 2, 4013.
• "An Enantioselective Strategy to Macrocyclic Bis-Indolylmaleimides. An Efficient Formal Synthesis of LY333531"
  Trost, B. M.; Tang, W. Org. Lett. 2001, 3, 3409.
• "An Efficient Enantioselective Synthesis of (-)-Galanthamine"
  Trost, B. M.; Tang, W. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2002, 41, 2795.
• "Enantioselecctive Synthesis of (-)-Codeine and (-)-Morphine"
  Trost, B.M.; Tang, W. J. Am Chem. Soc. 2002, 124, 14542.
• "Migratory Hydroamination: A Facile Enantioselective Synthesis of Benzomorphans"
  Trost, B. M.; Tang, W. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2003, 125, 8744.
• "Divergent Enantioselective Synthesis of (-)-Galanthamine and (-)-Morphine"
  Trost, B. M.; Tang, W.; Toste, F. D. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2005, 127, 14785.