Gregory Dudley, PhD, WVU
Chemical Synthesis as an Evolving Science and Enabling Technology
The Department of Chemistry Presents: Gregory Dudley, PhD, Eberly Family Distinguished Professor
Synthetic chemistry fuels innovation in energy, materials, medicine, etc. — with bioactive natural products like illudalic acid long serving as inspiration for synthetic and medicinal chemistry. Illudalic acid is a potent and selective tyrosine phosphatase inhibitor that features a densely functionalized benzene ring as the platform for its core pharmacophore. This seminar will cover research in the Dudley lab revolving around illudalic acid and the illudalane family of sesquiterpene natural products. Innovations in alkyne chemistry and benzannulation methods support increasingly efficient syntheses of illudalanes and “illudalogs” (illudalic acid analogues), thereby enabling collaborative phosphatase enzymology and design and aspirational development of in vivo inhibitors. The evolution of this project with indications of future directions will be presented.
About
Dr. Dudley received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2000 and continued as an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York from 2000-2002. He was on the faculty at Florida State University from 2002-2016, at which point he moved to West Virginia University to serve as Department Chair from 2016-2024. He is currently on assignment as a Program Director in the Division of Chemistry at the National Science Foundation.
Teaching Fields
Organic Chemistry
Research Interests
Organic synthesis, reaction methodology and technology, and medicinal chemistry
The fundamental goal of the Dudley lab is to devise, develop, and apply new ideas in organic chemistry to the efficient synthesis of complex molecules, particularly natural products with medicinal applications. Natural products research impacts the development of many important drugs including aspirin, penicillin, and Taxol. The ability to recreate and refine the molecular architecture of complex natural products through organic synthesis is key to understanding and ultimately leveraging these systems to improve human health. Our research aims to enable advances in modern medicine through innovations in the science and practice of organic synthesis.