Michael E. Jung

Michael E. Jung is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). He received his BA from Rice University (1969) and his Ph.D. from Columbia University (1973), both in Chemistry. After a one-year NATO Postdoctoral fellowship at the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule (ETH) in Zurich, he started his professional career at UCLA in 1974. He is an expert in synthetic organic chemistry and especially synthetic medicinal chemistry. He has published more than 340 original publications and is an inventor on 63 patents and patent applications. He has trained more than 90 PhD students and directed the research of more than 130 postdoctoral associates. He has received numerous awards for both his research and teaching, e.g., the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society, Glenn T. Seaborg Medalist, Richard C. Tolman Award, Carl M. Franklin Lecturer, American Association of Cancer Research Team Science Award, National Academy of Inventors Inductee, Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, a Fulbright-Hays Research Scholar Award, and the Inaugural Gold Shield Award from UCLA, among several others. One of the compounds he designed – enzalutamide, Xtandi – was approved in 2012 for the treatment of post-chemotherapy castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) and in 2014 for pre-chemotherapy CRPC (sold by Astellas). The prostate cancer research program of the company he co-founded, Aragon, was bought by Johnson and Johnson and the lead compound, ARN-509 (apalutamide, which was also designed and prepared in his lab), is now in phase 3 clinical trials for the treatment of non-metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. He is also the Director of the Bioscience Synthetic Chemistry Core facility at UCLA and in this role he has moved several academic medicinal drug discovery programs from initial hits or discoveries into lead candidate status. He has recently been named the Associate Dean for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the Division of Physical Sciences at UCLA. He has served on the Scientific Advisory Boards of several companies and recently was one of the founders of three new biotech startups: Trethera, Enlibrium, and LongLifeRx. He consults for more than 20 pharmaceutical firms, both biotechs and big pharma, and has helped move their drug discovery efforts forward for the past 35 years.