Fang Wu, Ph.D.
Principal Investigator
Professor, Shanghai Center for Systems Biomedicine, Shanghai Jiaotong University

Email: fang.wu@sjtu.edu.cn;
Tel: (86)21-34207545

Educations:
B.S.,   School of Life Science & Biotechnology, Shanghai Jiaotong University, 1999

M.S.,   Shanghai Research Center of Bioengineering, Chinese Academy of Science, 2002

Ph.D., Department of Biochemistry, University of Zurich, 2007

 Experience:

2002-2003         Department of Preclinical Safety, Novartis Pharma, Basel, Switzerland

2007                  Department of Organic Chemistry, University of Basel, Switzerland

2008-2010         Brain Mind Institute, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland

Research Interest:

Drug Design and Discovery

Numerous enzymes have become favored drug targets: 317 drugs, i.e., ∼30% of the total 1278 drugs listed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA; http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cder/ob/default.cfm) target 71 different enzymes, enzyme targets that account for 22% of the total 324 different known drug targets.

The projects in this direction are mainly looking for modulators of enzymes by novel biochemical or cellular assay, high throughput screening, enzymic kinetics and etc approaches. These modulators could be used as drug leads as well as chemical probes for the treatment or elucidating the underlying mechanism of diseases.

New therapeutic target or mechanism of Alzheimer’s Disease

Due to the increasing mean life expectancy, there is considerable interest to understand of the molecular and biochemical mechanisms of age related diseases. Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a common neurodegenerative disorder and afflicts 1 in 20 people over 65 in most developed countries. The patient number of AD is fast growing in China as well. In 2020, China with 11.7 million of patients will be the most affected country. Unfortunately, no disease modifying treatment or drugs is currently available for AD.

The projects currently running in the lab are focus on discovering novel treatments or cellular mechanism of AD to provide new drug leads or target for the disease.

Selected Publications:

1 Fang Wu, Philipp Christen, Heinz Gehring, A novel approach to inhibit intracellular vitamin B6-dependent enzymes: proof of principle with human and plasmodium ornithine decarboxylase and human histidine decarboxylase, FASEB J.  25 (2011), 2109-2122 

2 Fang Wu, Claude Schweizer, Nikita Rudinskiy, David M. Taylor, Aleksey Kazantsev, Ruth Luthi-Carter and Patrick C. Fraering, Novel g-secretase inhibitors uncover a common nucleotide-binding site in JAK3, SIRT2 and PS1, FASEB J.  24 (2010), 2464-74 

3 Fang Wu and Heinz Gehring, Structural requirements for novel coenzyme-substrate derivatives to inhibit intracellular human ornithine decarboxylase and cell proliferation,FASEB J. 23 (2009), 565-74 

4 Ingrid B.Müller#,*, Fang Wu#, Bärbel Bergmann, Julia Knöckel, Rolf D. Walter, Heinz Gehring, Carsten Wrenger, Poisoning pyridoxal 5- phosphate (PLP)-dependent enzymes: A new strategy to target the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum, PloS ONE 4 (2009), e4406 (#, Co-first author；*, corresponding author)  Highlighted by peers in Faculty1000 Biology Pharmacology & Drug Discovery section.  Hanjo Hellmann: Faculty of 1000 Biology, 16 Feb 2009 http://www.f1000biology.com/ article/id/ 1148087 /evaluation

5 Fang Wu, Jing Yu and Heinz Gehring, Inhibitory and structural studies of novel coenzyme-substrate analogs of human histidine decarboxylase, FASEB J. 22 (2008), 890-7 

6 Fang Wu, Doris Grossenbacher and Heinz Gehring, Transition state based-inhibitor of human ornithine decarboxylase inhibiting growth of tumor cells, Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, 6 (2007), 1831-9