New Editors For Journal Of Medicinal Chemistry

The American Chemical Society has named two new editors to the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. Gunda I. Georg, head of the department of medicinal chemistry at the University of Minnesota’s College of Pharmacy, in Minneapolis, and Shaomeng Wang, professor of medicine, pharmacology, and medicinal chemistry at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, will assume leadership of the journal in January 2012.

They will share the role currently filled by Philip S. Portoghese, distinguished professor in the department of medicinal chemistry in the University of Minnesota’s College of Pharmacy, who will retire from the journal at the end of the year after serving as its editor-in-chief for 40 years.

“Under the leadership of Professor Portoghese, the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry has become the most-cited international journal for the publication of original medicinal chemistry research,” Georg says. “This is an extraordinary achievement.” Wang echoes this point, calling Portoghese “a true legend in the field of medicinal chemistry and a visionary in scientific publishing.”

As the journal’s new editors, “we will strive to maintain and enhance the status of the journal and ensure that it continues to publish high-quality, original papers from around the world,” Georg says. “Sharing a common vision, we also plan to promote new methods of publishing and communication, consider the introduction of new manuscript categories, and encourage publication in expanding and emerging areas of science that are important to medicinal chemistry research.”

Georg and Wang are “an outstanding choice” as the new editors of the journal, says Portoghese, who says he will remain active in conducting research at the University of Minnesota. “As both are well-recognized scientists in the field, they will undoubtedly be a magnet for exceptional authors.”

At the University of Minnesota, Georg holds the Robert Vince Endowed Chair and McKnight Presidential Chair and directs its Institute for Therapeutics Discovery & Development, which she established. She serves on the editorial advisory boards of ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters and the Journal of Organic Chemistry and previously served on the editorial advisory board of the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.

Born in Herborn, Germany, Georg received a B.S. in pharmacy in 1975, a Ph.D. in medicinal chemistry in 1980, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in 1981, all at Philipps University of Marburg, in Germany. She then completed another postdoc assignment at the University of Ottawa.

Georg was an assistant professor of medicinal chemistry for the School of Pharmacy at the University of Rhode Island, Kingston, from 1983 until 1984. She then joined the faculty of the University of Kansas, Lawrence, and moved to the University of Minnesota as a tenured professor in 2007. Her research interests include cancer and male contraception.

At the University of Michigan, Wang is the Warner-Lambert/Parke-Davis Professor in Medicine, codirector of its Molecular Therapeutics Program, and director of its Cancer Drug Discovery Program. Currently, he is a senior editor of the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry and serves on the editorial advisory board of ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters.

Born in Henan province, in China, 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, Wang 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.

Wang’s research interests include drug design, synthesis, and development of small-molecule therapeutics for the treatment of human cancer and neurological conditions and development of new computational methods for drug design.