College of Chemistry

In a new publication released by ACS Publications, Dean Toste (Gerald E.K.Branch Distinguished Professor of Chemistry) joins Shu-Li You (Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry) penning the introduction to "Asymmetric Synthesis Enabled by Organometallic Complexes", a special edition on asymmetric synthesis enabled by organometallic complexes. According to the authors, "Chiral molecules in their enantioenriched or enantiopure forms today are targets of great significance for their widespread applications, ranging from medicinal chemistry to materials science. Asymmetric synthesis enabled by organometallic complexes is one of the preeminent routes toward these targets."

Birgitta Whaley, a UC Berkeley professor of chemistry and co-director of the Berkeley Quantum Information and Computation Center, has been appointed to the U.S. President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), the White House announced on Tuesday, Oct. 22. Whaley, who is also a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was among seven new advisers, the first PCAST members appointed by President Donald Trump since his inauguration three years ago. Upon signing an executive order this morning launching PCAST, President Trump indicated that he would appoint another nine advisers, for a total of 16.

The company, called 4D Molecular Therapeutics Inc., doesn't expect to put its first three experimental single-shot cures for a range of diseases into clinical trials until next year. Yet it already has key partnerships with well-known drug makers Roche, AstraZeneca plc and gene therapy pioneer uniQure NV. Founders David Schaffer, The Hubbard Howe Jr. Distinguished Professor of Biochemical Engineering, and Dr. David Kirn have worked on so-called "viral vectors" — the protein shells ridden by viruses to skip through the body — since before the company was formed in 2013. In gene therapy, those vehicles are engineered to remove the disease-triggering part of a virus and used instead to carry correct versions of genes to replace mutated genes.

Prominent heavy-element chemist Polly Arnold has been elected a member of Academia Europaea. Her research focuses on advancing our understanding of the bonding and reactivity of heavy elements, the elements of the f-block of the periodic table. Arnold was recently appointed Chemical Sciences Division Director at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Concurrent with her role at Berkeley Lab, she will also join the Chemistry Department faculty at UC Berkeley in January 2020.