Phillip Crews | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | August 15, 1943 Urbana, Illinois, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Chemist |
| Years active | 1969–present |
| Spouse | Peggy Crews |
Phillip Crews (born August 15, 1943) is an African American chemist at UCSC. His research work is around marine natural products chemistry and diversity education in chemistry. [1] He was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2008.
Crews was born in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois and lived in Chicago until the family moved to Palo Alto in the 1950s. [2] Crews attended Wilbur Junior High School and then Cubberley High School. He next attended UCLA, where he received a BS in chemistry and wrote the senior thesis: “Coupling constant mechanisms in 1H NMR”. He then received a PhD in chemistry at UCSB under Dominic J. Bertelli with a thesis titled “Chemistry of non-benzenoid aromatics”. [3] Crews then wrote and was awarded an NSF postdoctoral fellowship to investigate the stereochemistry of organo-metalloids at Princeton University with the late Kurt Mislow. [2] [4]
In 1970, Crews obtained a position in the chemistry department at UCSC, where he began his research career investigating physical organic chemistry. [1] In 1973 he shifted his research program towards the nascent area of marine natural products chemistry [5] [6] [7] as an untenured assistant professor.
Crews uses bioassay-guided isolation to discover natural products that may help treat or cure human diseases, incorporating elements of structure elucidation and employing state-of-the-art nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques. [8] He became especially interested in the molecular structures of the psymberins and the bengamides, molecules isolated from Indo-Pacific sponges. [2] Psymberin is one of his most important discoveries because of its potential for further development to treat solid tumor cancers. The mixed NRPS-PKS biosynthetic product comes from the marine sponge Psammocinia aff. Bulbosa. Crews research on psymberin has stimulated almost 100 studies and publications by other laboratories. Another molecule of importance is bengamide B, that led to an anti-cancer Phase I clinical trial on a close analog. [2] In addition to these two molecules, Crews has discovered many small molecule tools derived from marine sponges, some of which are used worldwide by research teams as molecular probes. These small molecules include the actin inhibitors, jasplakinolide and latrunculin, [9] the Mitochondrial Complex I inhibitor, mycothiazole, the human methionine aminopeptidase inhibitor, and fascaplysins, an opioid receptor agonist. He is also a holder of a patent for oxazole anthelmintic agents of marine origin. [10] Crews led and co-authored of the widely-used textbook, “Organic Structure Analysis”. [11] , along with Marcel Jaspars and Jaime Rodriguez. The first edition was published by Oxford University Press in 1998 and with the second edition being published in 2009. Crews' goal was to highlight the intense complexity of spectroscopic analysis of natural products, from which the “Crews rule” emerged. The “Crews rule” states that if a molecule’s ratio of hydrogens to carbons is less than 1, then additional measures should be performed to confirm the structure. [2]
In 1990 he became the principal investigator in the National Cooperative Drug Discovery Group (NCDDG) program. [12] , a position he held for 20 years. [2] In 2017, he was honored with a special issue of the Journal of Natural Products. [2]
Crews has participated and led in numerous outreach programs, [13] including running the NIH-supported ACCESS program [14] for the past 27 years. This program helps first-generation and under-represented students from 2-year community colleges transition to 4-year university by giving them access to cutting edge research and building their confidence to continue in careers in science. His dedication to diversity and inclusion was recognized with UCSC's 2004 Excellence through Diversity Award. [15] He also gave the UCSC Spring 2019 Emeriti Lecture on “Inspirational Biomolecules from Oceania.” [16] In 2021, the UCSC chemistry department established the Phillip Crews symposium, "Powered by Chemistry, Strengthened by Diversity" [17] and student fellowship.
In Crews’ early days in academia, Crews wanted to add a new dimension to chemical education at UCSC by contributing to the general education curriculum. He therefore launched of a new course, “Chemistry of wine - Introductory lecture-laboratory course for non-chemistry students” [18] as well as other lectures such as Wines & winemaking Merging Chemistry Fundamentals and Sensory Evaluation Outcomes to Gain a 21st Century Perspective at Cabrillo College. [8] This coursework, as well as his keen interest in wine, lead him to found Pelican Ranch Winery [19] [20] [21] with his wife Peggy (BW CA-W-3444) in 1997.
In the fields of medicine, biotechnology and pharmacology, drug discovery is the process by which new candidate medications are discovered.
George William "Bill" Domhoff is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus and research professor of psychology and sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a founding faculty member of UCSC's Cowell College. He is best known as the author of several best-selling sociology books, including Who Rules America? and its seven subsequent editions.
Pharmacognosy is the study of crude drugs obtained from medicinal plants, animals, fungi, and other natural sources. The American Society of Pharmacognosy defines pharmacognosy as "the study of the physical, chemical, biochemical, and biological properties of drugs, drug substances, or potential drugs or drug substances of natural origin as well as the search for new drugs from natural sources".
Total synthesis is the complete chemical synthesis of a complex molecule, often a natural product, from simple, commercially-available precursors. It usually refers to a process not involving the aid of biological processes, which distinguishes it from semisynthesis. Syntheses may sometimes conclude at a precursor with further known synthetic pathways to a target molecule, in which case it is known as a formal synthesis. Total synthesis target molecules can be natural products, medicinally-important active ingredients, known intermediates, or molecules of theoretical interest. Total synthesis targets can also be organometallic or inorganic, though these are rarely encountered. Total synthesis projects often require a wide diversity of reactions and reagents, and subsequently requires broad chemical knowledge and training to be successful.
Medicinal or pharmaceutical chemistry is a scientific discipline at the intersection of chemistry and pharmacy involved with designing and developing pharmaceutical drugs. Medicinal chemistry involves the identification, synthesis and development of new chemical entities suitable for therapeutic use. It also includes the study of existing drugs, their biological properties, and their quantitative structure-activity relationships (QSAR).
A natural product is a natural compound or substance produced by a living organism—that is, found in nature. In the broadest sense, natural products include any substance produced by life. Natural products can also be prepared by chemical synthesis and have played a central role in the development of the field of organic chemistry by providing challenging synthetic targets. The term natural product has also been extended for commercial purposes to refer to cosmetics, dietary supplements, and foods produced from natural sources without added artificial ingredients.
Kyriacos Costa Nicolaou is a Cypriot-American chemist known for his research in the area of natural products total synthesis. He is currently Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor of Chemistry at Rice University, having previously held academic positions at The Scripps Research Institute/UC San Diego and the University of Pennsylvania.
The American Society of Pharmacognosy (ASP) is a scientific society that promotes the growth and development of pharmacognosy through presentation of research achievements and publication of meritorious research.
Stuart Schreiber, Ph.D. is the Morris Loeb Research Professor at Harvard University, a co-Founder of the Broad Institute, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, Emeritus, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine. His work integrates chemical biology and human biology to advance the science of therapeutics. Key advances include the discovery that small molecules can function as “molecular glues” that promote protein–protein interactions, the co-discovery of mTOR and its role in nutrient-response signaling, the discovery of histone deacetylases and the demonstration that chromatin marks regulate gene expression, the development and application of diversity-oriented synthesis to microbial therapeutics, and the discovery of vulnerabilities of cancer cells linked to genetic, lineage and cell-state features, including ferroptotic vulnerabilities. His notable awards include the Wolf Prize in Chemistry and the Arthur Cope Award. His approach to discovering new therapeutics guided many biotechnology companies that he founded, including Vertex Pharmaceuticals and Ariad Pharmaceuticals. He has founded or co-founded 14 biotechnology companies, which have developed 16 first-in-human approved drugs or advanced clinical candidates.
Marine pharmacognosy is the investigation and identification of medically important plants and animals in the marine environment. It is a sub branch of terrestrial pharmacognosy. Generally the drugs are obtained from the marine species of bacteria, virus, algae, fungi and sponges. It is a relatively new field of study in western medicine, although many marine organisms were used in traditional Chinese medicine. It was not until 2004 that the first FDA approval of a drug came directly from the sea: ziconotide, which was isolated from a marine cone snail.
Psymberin, also known as irciniastatin A, is a cytotoxin derived from sea sponges. It was discovered by two independent research groups, one led by Dr. Phil Crews and one led by Dr. Jean Schmidt, in 2004. Psymberin was found to be highly bioactive as it showed LC50s at nanomolar concentrations against various types of tumors.
Jerry L. McLaughlin is a researcher who has conducted research for 28 years studying plants looking for molecules that fight cancer at Purdue University's School of Pharmacy. He published his findings on the Annonaceous acetogenins in peer reviewed journals. These acetogenins have been identified as having a number of effects, including acting as potential anticancer agents.
Computer-assisted structure elucidation is the technique of using software to generate all possible molecular structures that are consistent with a particular set of spectroscopic data. The subject has been often reviewed. Available CASE software include LSD, SENECA, COCON, CMC-se, and Structure Elucidator.
Jon Clardy is currently the Hsien Wu and Daisy Yen Wu professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Harvard Medical School. His research focuses on the isolation and structural characterization of natural products, and currently investigates the role of biologically active small molecules in mediating symbiotic interactions and disease.
Oroidin is a bromopyrrole alkaloid, originally isolated from marine sponges in the genus Agelas. Its complex structure leads to wide biological activities, which makes Oroidin a potential drug candidate for various diseases. It also serves as chemical defense in marine sponges.
Craig M. Crews is an American scientist at Yale University known for his contributions to chemical biology. He is known for his contributions to the field of induced proximity through his work in creating heterobifunctional molecules that hijack cellular processes by inducing the interaction of two proteins inside a living cell. His initial work focused on the discovery of PROteolysis-TArgeting Chimeras (PROTACs) to trigger degradation of disease-causing proteins, a process known as targeted protein degradation (TPD), and he has since developed new versions of -TACs to leverage other cellular processes and protein families to treat disease.
Sarah E. O'Connor is an American molecular biologist working to understand the molecular machinery involved in assembling important plant natural products – vinblastine, morphine, iridoids, secologanin – and how changing the enzymes involved in this pathway lead to diverse analogs. She was a Project Leader at the John Innes Centre in the UK between 2011 and 2019. O'Connor was appointed by the Max Planck Society in 2018 to head the Department of Natural Product Biosynthesis at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, taking up her role during 2019.
Paul Josef Scheuer was a German/American chemist.
George Robert Pettit II was a Regents’ Professor in Chemistry in the School of Molecular Sciences (SMS) at Arizona State University. He was an internationally renowned and respected researcher in the field of natural anticancer compounds throughout his career of over six decades. Pettit has been honored by the International Cancer Advocacy Network, the American Society of Pharmacognosy, and Washington State University, his alma mater. A special edition of the Journal of Natural Products is dedicated to Pettit, and the French journal Médicine Sciences paid tribute to him. Pettit’s achievements earned him the designation of Outstanding Investigator by the United States National Institutes of Health National Cancer Institute (NCI). Pettit and his impact on the field of anti-cancer compounds are the subject of the book, “Waging War on Cancer.”
Plakortis is a genus of marine sponges in the order Homosclerophorida, first described by Franz Eilhard Schulze in 1880.
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