Special Seminar: Innovative Drug Discovery from Microbial Natural Products

Event details Date: Tuesday, August 18, 2026 Time: 11:00 AM to 11:00 AM Location: 120 Latimer Hall Type: Film About this event Toshiaki Sunazuka President and Professor The Kitasato Institute, and Kitasato University Tokyo, Japan Abstract: Naturally-occurring novel bioactive microbial metabolites (so called Omura natural products) have been discovered by a variety of customised screening methods in TheKitasato Institute, which have been promising to subsequently develop into novel andextremely useful pharmaceutical products. 7 compounds including Avermectin and mIvermectin are already used as medicines. This lecture provides an overview of this research, encompassing the isolation, and total synthesis, mode of action, and the analog synthesis as well as the determination of the absolute stereochemistry of Omura natural products, such as 1) meroterpenoids, pyripyropenes (cholesterol lowering agents), arisugacins (acetylcholinesterase inhibitors), 2) indole alkaloids, madindolines(IL-6 modulators), and neoxaline (cell proliferation inhibitor), 3) macrolide, macrosphelides (cell-cell adhesion inhibitors), and luminamicin (anti-anaerobic antibiotic), and 4) cyclic peptides, beuveriolides (ACAT inhibitors) and verticilide (ryanodine inhibitor) and also argifin (chitinase inhibitor). In addition, in situ click chemistry for Omura natural products was also described. Professor Toshiaki Sunazuka’s Research: Prof. Sunazuka’s research interests are in the areas of synthetic organic chemistry, medicinal, and bioorganic chemistry of bioactive microbial natural products. He has succeeded in the total syntheses of 62 novel complex natural products including Ivermectin, Luminamicin, Pyripyropenes, Macroshelides, Madindolines, Arisugasins, Paspalicine, and so on to date. Official event details: https://events.berkeley.edu/chem/event/326677-special-seminar-innovative-drug-discovery-from