Commercializing scientific research will be the focus of an upcoming program featuring Dr. Shaomeng Wang, who is widely recognized for his pioneering work in the field of drug discovery and his ongoing efforts to bring the fruits of that work to the marke
t.
The talk, titled “Translating Your Research Discoveries into Practice: It takes a village!”, will begin at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, June 25, in Room 109 of the Robert C. Byrd Biotechnology Science Center on Marshall University’s Huntington campus. The event is part of a series of public lectures hosted by the Marshall Institute for Interdisciplinary Research.
Wang is the Warner-Lambert/Parke-Davis Professor of Medicine and professor of internal medicine and pharmacology in the University of Michigan Medical School, and professor of medicinal chemistry in the College of Pharmacy. He also serves as co-director of the Molecular Therapeutics Program at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center and is the director of the Cancer Drug Discovery Program. He is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, the most-cited journal in the field.
As part of his research, Wang’s laboratory has successfully developed several classes of anticancer drugs designed to specifically kill tumor cells while leaving normal cells unharmed.
His work has resulted in 33 U.S. patents and four license agreements.
He co-founded Ascenta Therapeutics with former Michigan faculty members Drs. Marc Lippman and Dajun Yang in 2003, and established Ascentage Pharma Group in 2009. More recently, he created OncoFusion Therapeutics with fellow faculty member Dr. Arul Chinnaiyan to develop personalized cancer therapies.
To date, he has advanced four novel cancer drugs into Phase I/II clinical development and several more drugs into late-stage preclinical development.
Wang received a B.S. in chemistry from Peking University in 1986 and a Ph.D. in chemistry from Case Western Reserve University in 1992. After completing postdoctoral training in drug design at the National Cancer Institute in 1996, he served as assistant and associate professor at Georgetown University until 2001. He then joined the faculty at the University of Michigan Medical School as a tenured associate professor in 2001 and was promoted to professor in 2006.
In March, he was honored with the University of Michigan’s Distinguished University Innovator Award, which honors faculty who have made important and lasting contributions to society by developing novel ideas and insights through their research, and then translating them to practice.
For more information about the program, contact Hollie Bailey at bailey134@marshall.edu or 304-696-3549.