Personal Introduction

Jian Zhang is Distinguished Professor and Head of Medicinal Chemistry & Bioinformatics Center at . In addition, he is also Dean of the School of Pharmacy at Ningxia Medical University, a member of the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council in China, and founder of Nutshell Therapeutics.

In the last decade, his research is concerned with drug design, medicinal chemistry and chemical biology, especially target identification and first-in-class allosteric drug discovery. He has a track record of more than 200 publications in high-ranked scientific journals, including patents and patent applications, and numerous invited talks worldwide. He has received some awards such as ACS Excellent Research Advisor, Biomedical Innovation Award by Chinese Pharmaceutical Society, and One of China's Top Ten Science and Technology Young Scientist in 2017.

Publications

1. Lu S*, He X, Yang Z, Chai Z, Zhou S, Wang J, Rehman AU, Ni D, Pu J, Sun J*, Zhang J*. Activation pathway of a G protein-coupled receptor uncovers conformational intermediates as novel targets for allosteric drug design. Nat Commun. 2021, 12(1): 4721.

2. Ni D, Wei J, He X, Rehman AU, Li X, Qiu Y, Pu J, Lu S*, Zhang J*. Discovery of cryptic allosteric sites using reversed allosteric communication by a combined computational and experimental strategy. Chem Sci. 2020, 12: 464-476.

3. Lu S, Shen Q, Zhang J*. Allosteric methods and their applications: facilitating the discovery of allosteric drugs and the investigation of allosteric mechanisms. Acc Chem Res. 2019, 52(2): 492-500.

4. Huang Z, Zhao J, Deng W, Chen Y, Shang J, Song K, Zhang L, Wang C, Lu S, Yang X, He B, Min J, Hu H, Tan M, Xu J, Zhang Q, Zhong J, Sun X, Mao Z, Lin H, Xiao M, Chin YE, Jiang H, Xu Y*, Chen G*, Zhang J*. Identification of a cellular active SIRT6 allosteric activator. Nat Chem Biol. 2018, 14(12): 1118-1126.

5. Jiang H, Deng R, Yang X, Shang J, Lu S, Zhao Y, Song K, Liu X, Zhang Q, Chen Y, Chinn YE, Wu G, Li J, Chen G, Yu J*, Zhang J*. Peptidomimetic inhibitors of APC-Asef interaction block colorectal cancer migration. Nat Chem Biol. 2017, 13(9):994-1001.

6. Shen Q, Cheng F, Song H, Lu W, Zhao J, An X, Liu M, Chen G, Zhao Z*, Zhang J*. Proteome-scale investigation of protein allosteric regulation perturbed by somatic mutations in 7,000 cancer genomes. Am J Hum Genet. 2017, 100(1): 5-20.

7. Lu S*, Ni D, Wang C, He X, Lin H, Wang Z*, Zhang J*. Deactivation pathway of Ras GTPase underlies conformational substates as targets for drug design. ACS Catalysis. 2019, 9(8): 7188-7196.

8. Huang M, Song K, Liu X, Lu S, Shen Q, Wang R, Gao J, Hong Y, Li Q, Ni D, Xu J, Chen G, Zhang J*. AlloFinder: a strategy for allosteric modulator discovery and allosterome analyses. Nucleic Acids Res. 2018, 46: 451-458.

9. Liu X, Lu S, Song K, Shen Q, Ni D, Li Q, He X, Zhang H, Wang Q, Chen Y, Li X, Wu J, Sheng C, Chen G, Lu X*, Zhang J*. Unraveling allosteric landscapes of allosterome with ASD. Nucleic Acids Res. 2020, 48: 394-D401.

10. Song K, Li Q, Gao W, Lu S, Shen Q, Liu X, Wu Y, Wang B, Lin H, Chen G, Zhang J*. AlloDriver: a method for the identification and analysis of cancer driver targets. Nucleic Acids Res. 2019, 47: 315-321.