In honor of Professor Li‐He Zhang on the occasion of his 80th birthday
Authors: Xinjing Tang, Shaoru Wang
Journal: Medicinal Research Reviews (2018)

This issue of Medicinal Research Reviews is dedicated to Professor Li-He Zhang, Boya Chair Professor and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Peking University, on the occasion of his 80th birthday. Professor Zhang obtained his bachelor degree in 1958 and his graduate diploma in 1967, both in medicinal chemistry, from the Department of Pharmacy, Beijing Medical College. As a graduate student, he worked on triazine chemistry and synthesis of sulfur substituted sugars under the guidance of Prof. Xu Wang. He worked in Dr. Sidney Hecht′s group as a research associate from 1981 to 1983 in the Department of Chemistry, University of Virginia (USA), where he focused on total synthesis of bleomycin A2 and its mechanism of action in DNA cleavage. He also worked on manual synthesis of oligonucleotides. Professor Zhang returned to China and became a professor of medicinal chemistry in 1985 in the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Beijing Medical University (now Peking University Health Science Center), a position that he has held until now. He also served as the dean of the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences (1987–1999), and founded the State Key Laboratory of Natural and Biomimetic Drugs in 1985 and served as its director (1992–2005). His research interest has centered on studies of various chemical and biological issues of nucleic acids, and development of anticancer and antiviral drugs. Specifically, he has developed a series of methods and strategies for precise modifications of antisense oligonucleotides, siRNA, and aptamers, and made significant contributions to the field of ribozyme mechanism of action, artificial oligonucleotides, and nucleosides and nucleotides as anticancer and antiviral agents. He has also developed many analogs of intracellular messenger nucleotides (cADPR and cAMP), carried out systematic studies of their chemical and biological activities, and discovered a cADPR-binding protein related to calcium release activities in cells. Professor Zhang has published extensively in the field of nucleic acids and medicinal chemistry with more than 300 research articles/reviews and five books. Prof. Zhang was elected into the Chinese Academy of Science in 1995 and chaired the Chemistry Division of National Natural Science Foundation of China between 1999 and 2006. He has a long list of other honors and positions including serving as chairman of the Federation of Asian Pharmaceutical Associations (1997–1999), vice Chairman of the Chinese Pharmaceutical Association (1997–2007), a titular member of Division of Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry, International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) (2005–2006), and a fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry (UK) (since 2006). His research awards include Japan Otani Research Award, Wu-Yang award in medicine, Colorcon award (FIP), HeliangHeli award, Nagai-Hisamitsu award (FAPA), and a National Award in Natural Sciences among others. He was granted an honorary doctorate degree by Hoshi University, Japan, in 1991, and Edgar-Snow Professorship by Missouri University in Kansas City, USA, in 1992. He has been on the editorial advisory boards of many scientific journals including Medicinal Research Reviews, Current Topics in Medicinal Chemistry, Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry, and ChemMedChem, He is associate editor of European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, editor of Journal of Chinese Pharmaceutical Sciences, and associate editor of Journal of Chemistry of Chinese Universities. Prof. Zhang has been a thought leader in and a strong advocate for the field of medicinal chemistry and chemical biology in China. As a board member of the National Natural Science Foundation, he proposed and led two key research initiatives on chemical biology: regulation of signal pathways with small molecule probes (2008–2016) and dynamic modification and chemical intervention of biomacromolecules (2017–2025). To celebrate the 80th birthday of Professor Zhang, the International Symposium on Frontiers of Natural and Biomimetic Drugs was organized (October 2017) to honor his contributions in nucleic acid chemistry and medicinal chemistry. At the same time, we organized this special issue of Medicinal Research Reviews in his honor as a tribute to his many outstanding contributions in science, and to his devotion to mentoring many young scientists in the field of chemical biology and medicinal chemistry in China.