DONG GUO WINS DUTCH MEDICINAL CHEMISTRY PRIZE 2013-2014
On 27 March 2015, the Dutch Medicinal Chemistry Prize 2013-2014 was awarded to Dr. Don Guo during the annual spring symposium of the Medicinal Chemistry Section of the KNCV for his dissertation entitled Drug-Target Residence Time. A case for the adenosine A1 and A2a receptors. The prize, consisting of a certificate and a sum of EUR 1,000 made available by Mercachem BV, is awarded for the best dissertation in the field of medicinal chemistry research published from 1 January 2013 to 31 December 2014. Dr. Dong Guo obtained his PhD in June 2014 under the supervision of Prof. dr. Ad IJzerman for work conducted at the division of Dr. Laura Heitman of Leiden University.
The panel of judges, consisting of Prof. dr. Koen Augustyns (University of Antwerp), Dr. Laurent Provins (UCB Pharma), Dr. Floris van Delft (SynAffix) and Dr. Anita Wegert (Mercachem), awarded the prize to Dr. Guo because he was able to further develop and apply an emerging concept within medicinal chemistry, that of drug-target residence time. Dr. Guo has optimised the residence time of a series of ligands with high affinity for the adenosine receptor and demonstrated its significance for medicinal chemistry. To this end, Dr. Guo used a range of techniques for synthetic biochemistry, binding of radio ligands and cell-based functional studies, and also developed and validated various kinetic methods, among which a high-throughput screening method for industrial medicinal chemistry applications. Dr. Guo’s active involvement in and talent for research is evident, among other things, from his long list of publications, which includes more than 10 papers as PhD student as well as four as co-author during his Master’s studies.