Paul J. Hergenrother is the Kenneth L. Rinehart Jr. Endowed Chair in Natural Products Chemistry and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois, affiliated with the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. He holds additional roles as Professor at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, Micro and Nanotechnology Lab, and Carle Illinois College of Medicine, as well as Deputy Director of the Cancer Center at Illinois and Director of the NIH Chemistry-Biology Interface Training Program. Education: B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Notre Dame (1994), Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Texas at Austin (1999). His postdoctoral training was at Harvard University under an American Cancer Society fellowship. Research focuses on synthetic organic chemistry and chemical biology, targeting novel anticancer and antibacterial agents. Key innovations include the 'Complexity-to-Diversity' (CtD) method for generating drug-like compounds, discovery of PAC-1 (a procaspase-3 activator), and DNQ (NQO1-activated anticancer agent). His work also addresses Gram-negative bacterial resistance through predictive antibiotic design and permeation rules. Highlighted contributions include: Development of PAC-1, advancing toward human clinical trials. Identification of DNQ for NQO1-overexpressing cancers. Creation of predictive guidelines for antibiotic accumulation in Gram-negative bacteria. Discovery of fabimycin and lolimycin as novel antibiotics. Awards include the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award (2017) and ACS Sosnovsky Award (2018). His lab collaborates with medical institutions and industry for translational research, emphasizing both chemical synthesis and biological validation.
- Organic Chemistry
- Chemical Biology
- Biochemistry
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