Michael E. Jung

Michael E. Jung is currently a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He is also an Adjunct Member of the Department of Medical and Molecular Pharmacology. He is a member of the Molecular Biology Institute and the California Nanosystems Institute. He serves as the funding director of the Biosciences Synthetic Chemistry Core Facility at UCLA. He received his B.A. in Chemistry from Rice University and his Ph.D. from Columbia University.

He trained as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) in Zürich in the laboratory of Albert Eschenmoser. In 1974 Dr. Jung joined the faculty at UCLA as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, becoming a Professor in 1983. He is a widely acclaimed leader in synthetic medicinal chemistry and drug discovery. Beginning in 2003, he teamed with Professor Charles Sawyers at UCLA on a joint project to design and prepare new antagonists of the androgen receptor which still functioned under the high AR expression found in castration resistant prostate cancer (CRPC). This led to the discovery of novel AR antagonists and culminated in the approval of one of his analogues, RD162’ - enzalutamide, as a first line treatment for CRPC in 2012. A different AR antagonist, ARN509, is now in phase 3 clinical trials for pre-metastatic CRPC, sponsored by Johnson and Johnson. He has been a founder of six biotech startups and has more than 15 ongoing collaborations with MDs and biologists at UCLA and elsewhere. He serves on the Board of Directors or the Scientific Advisory Board of five companies. He consult currently for 25 pharmaceutical firms and biotech companies. Recently he and his wife established the Jung Chair in Medicinal Chemistry and Drug Discovery at UCLA.