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Santa Clara Valley Section
Newsletter
American Chemical Society
November 2007
Volume 29 No. 11
• January Dinner Meeting: CascadeRadical Annulation: FromCuriosity to the Clinic
• Chair’s Message
• Mosher Award
• November Dinner Meeting:Chemical Magic from the GroceryStore: Dispel Chemophobia
• ACS Podcasting Science forMembers and Public
• Highlights of National ChemistryWeek
NOVEMBER 2007 NEWSLETTER TOPICS January Dinner Meeting
Cascade Radical Annulations:From Curiosity to the Clinic
Dennis P. Curran
January Dinner Meeting
Date: Monday, January 7, 2008
Time: 6:00 Social Hour7:00 Dinner8:00 Presentation
Location: Biltmore Hotel & Suites2151 Laurelwood Blvd.Santa Clara, CA 95054
Speaker: Dr. Dennis P. Curran University of Pittsburgh Cascade Radical Annulations
Cost: $27.00 with the choice of Grilled Salmon or Vegetarian CrepesIncludes wine with dinner.
Reservations: www.scvacs.orgShirley Radding408-246-2564
` 408-296-8625 Fax
Reservations should be made byJanuary 3rd stating your name, address,company affiliation, number of peoplein party, and menu selection. If you areunable to honor your reservation anddo not cancel by Friday, January 4th,you will be invoiced following the din-ner meeting.
Abstract:The road to
drug discoveryand develop-ment in an aca-demic setting isa long and tor-tuous one, espe-cially if youdon’t even set out to discover a drugin the first place. Having developedmany 3-atom + 2-atom radical annula-tions during the 1980’s, we becamecurious around 1990 whether wecould develop a 4-atom + 1-atom rad-ical annulation. The reaction that wediscovered was not entirely the onethat we planned, but in many ways itproved even more interesting. Onething lead to another, and soon wewere making the anti-cancer agentcamptothecin, and later new analogs.
and the chemistry and biology resultseventually lead to the preclinical and
By the time you read this, Dr.Andy Sae may have given his talkabout Chemical Magic from theGrocery Store. If it’s not too late,be sure to sign up on our website:www.scvacs.org. If you can’t dinewith us, come to hear the talk.
I remember in grade school andhigh school “experimenting” withjust about everything I could find,mostly in the kitchen, using mytrusty Gilbert chemistry set. Therewas a certain magic about thoseexperiments with grocery items mymom brought home from the store.There were a few surprises, like foulodors and weird happenings in my“stew”, such that I can now under-stand how phobias might be gener-ated. But I was also amazed at whathappened when feeding my pot
Chair’s Message
continued on next page
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The Santa Clara Valley Section of the American Chemical Society is the copyright owner of all material published in The Silicon Valley Chemist. No part of this publi-cation may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrievalsystem, without advance permission in writing from the editor, particularly for commercial purposes. Authorization to photocopy items for limited internal or personaluse, or the limited internal or personal use of specific clients, is granted by the Executive Committee of the Santa Clara Valley Section of the American Chemical Society.
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One unusual class of new camp-tothecins bearing a silicon substituent,“silatecans”, was especially exciting,
with things like baking soda andwatching the bubbles and the move-ment. Hmmm, what’s happeninghere? I suppose these wonderingswere the genesis of my interest inchemistry. Perhaps some of youwould want to share your ownexperiences about how you gotstarted with the science. If so, sendme an email with your musing recol-lections. I’ll see that they get into thenewsletter.
We finally clarified our proposedbylaws revisions and documentedthe discussion so that we can allvote on whether to accept them. Allthis is part of an effort to make vot-ing for officers and the running ofthe section easier to do while reduc-ing costs. The Executive Committeevoted to approve the changes in thebylaws to allow electronic votingand now it’s your turn to tell uswhat you think about it. Watch themail for your ballot and VOTE. Asyou know, elections are costly andtime consuming. We hope to stream-line the process and make our fundsgo farther in supporting sectionevents such as National ChemistryWeek in October, the Teachers’Chemistry Workshop held almostevery year for the science teachersin our communities, the SectionAwards Program, and the monthlydinner meetings.
We need your help. As I havestated before and I’m sure youknow, we have a large group ofchemists in our Section at varyinglevels of expertise and education.We need your ideas and support tonot only sustain the ongoing pro-grams but develop new ones thatwill capture the young chemists,women chemists, chemistry & sci-ence teachers at all levels, and stu-dents aspiring to education andcareers in science and chemistry. Ifyou can be of service to the commu-nity and to the Society, please let usknow of your interest.
See you at a dinner meetingsoon!
George Lechner
Chair’s Message, continued from front page January Dinner Meeting, continued from front page
One of the Santa Clara Valley Section’s highest honors is the Harryand Carol Mosher Award. This award is granted annually to an ACSmember chosen from the national community who has demonstratedexcellence in chemistry, worked to ensure advancement of the chemi-cal profession and has participated fully in the ACS on a national,regional and local level. This award was established in 1980 in honorof Harry and Carol Mosher, two founding members of the Santa ClaraValley section who both epitomize these values.
The Mosher award has been presented to industrial chemists,including Paul Anderson, (Bristol-Myers Squibb, 2004), and JoginderLal, (Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, 1996), to academicchemists including Robert Parry (University of Utah, 2006), Michael P.Doyle (University of Maryland, 2005) and Joseph Lambert(Northwestern University, 2003) and to chemists who work at non-profit research institutes including Darleane Hoffman (LawrenceBerkeley National Laboratory, 2000).
The recipients of the Mosher award are a very distinguishedgroup of individuals including at least 2 past National ACS presidents(Helen Free and Robert Parry), and multiple winners of national ACSrecognitions. This year’s recipient of the Mosher Award, Dr. DennisCurran (see adjoining story) will also be recognized in 2008 as therecipient of the ACS national award for Creative Work in FluorineChemistry. Please be sure to attend the January 7 dinner meeting tomeet with Dr. Curran.
Mosher Award
now clinical development of thesilatecan “DB-67”. This lecturerecounts the DB-67 story from curiosi-ty to the clinic.
Biography:Dennis P. Curran received his B.S.
in 1975 from Boston College. HisPh.D. was granted from the Universityof Rochester in 1979 where heworked under Professor Andrew S.Kende. After a two-year postdoctoralstay with Professor Barry M. Trost atthe University of Wisconsin, Dr.Curran joined the faculty of theChemistry Department at theUniversity of Pittsburgh in 1981. Henow holds the ranks of DistinguishedService Professor and Bayer Professorof Chemistry, and is the founder ofFluorous Technologies, Inc.(www.fluorous.com). Among otherawards, Dr. Curran has received theBlaise Pascal International ResearchChair, Préfecture de la Région D’Ile-
de-France Paris (2007-2008), thePittsburgh Award, Pittsburgh Section,American Chemical Society (2006),the Morley Medal, Cleveland Section,American Chemical Society (2006), thePittsburgh Magazine Innovators Award(2003), American Chemical SocietyAward for Creativity in OrganicSynthesis (2000) and the CopeScholar Award (1988), and theJanssen Prize for Creativity in OrganicSynthesis (1998). He is currently anISI “Highly Cited Researcher”(www.isihighlycited.com). Dr.Curran has authored over 350 papers,thirty patents and two books, and iswell known for his work in at theinterface of radical chemistry andorganic synthesis. More recently hehas made significant contributions tothe emerging discipline of fluorouschemistry. Additional information is athttp://radical.chem.pitt.edu.
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New Mexico ScienceTeacher Association. He haspresented numerous chemi-cal magic shows to schoolteachers, children, and par-ents and many demonstra-tions in regional and nation-al meetings. He participated
in the ACS Operation ChemistryTraining of Trainers Program in 1994and has conducted many scienceteacher workshops. Dr. Sae wasnamed the 1998-1999 New MexicoProfessor of the Year by theCarnegie Foundation for theAdvancement of Teaching.
ACS Podcasting Science for Members and PublicACS members now have the
opportunity to share exciting, cutting-edge scientific discoveries with theirchildren, local science teachers, muse-ums, libraries, and other venuesthrough a new podcast launched thissummer by the ACS Office ofCommunications (OC). The sciencepodcast, unveiled in July, reports onthe latest studies published in the ACSjournals to a broad public audience atno charge.
The podcasts are available bygoing to http://www.acs.org. At theupper right of the page, click on“Press Room”, and then on the PressRoom page, click on “ScienceElements” near the bottom of thepage under the heading, “Podcasts.”It describes research reported in ACS’sprestigious suite of 36 peer-reviewedscientific journals and Chemical &Engineering News, ACS’s weekly newsmagazine. Those journals, publishedby the world’s largest scientific society,contain about 30,000 scientific reportsfrom scientists around the world eachyear. The reports include discoveriesin medicine, health, nutrition, energy,the environment and other fieldsthat span science’s horizons fromastronomy to zoology.
November Dinner MeetingChemical Magic from the Grocery Store:
Dispel ChemophobiaDr. Andy Sae
November Dinner Meeting
Date: Tuesday, November 13th
Time: 6:00 Social Hour7:00 Dinner8:00 Presentation
Location: Biltmore Hotel & Suites2151 Laurelwood Blvd.Santa Clara, CA 95054
Speaker: Dr. Andy SaeChemical Magic from the Grocery Store
Cost: $27.00 with the choice of Pork Marsala Pasta PrimaveraIncludes wine with dinner.
Reservations: www.scvacs.orgShirley Radding408-246-2564
Reservations should be made byNovember 9th stating your name,address, company affiliation, numberof people in party, and menu selec-tion. If you are unable to honor yourreservation and do not cancel byMonday, November 12th, you will beinvoiced following the dinner meeting.
Andy Sae was born inHong Kong. He received aB.S. degree in chemistry, anM.S. in genetics, and aPh.D. in biochemistry fromKansas State University. Dr.Sae joined Eastern NewMexico University in 1969and is now Professor Emeritus after31 years of service. He is a memberof the Division of ChemicalEducation of the ACS, and a mem-ber of the National and New MexicoScience Teacher Associations. Hereceived the 1994 OutstandingService to Science Award from the
Happy Thanksgiving
Those discoveries improve peo-ples’ lives, and Science Elements willmake that information more widelyavailable. The podcast draws on anOffice of Communications product,PressPac, which initially was devel-oped to assist science journalists inresearching and reporting news.
The podcaster for ScienceElements is Steve Showalter, a chemistat the U.S. Department of Energy’sSandia National Laboratories inAlbuquerque, N.M. Showalter’s workat Sandia focuses on the design anddevelopment of new batteries. “As anactive member of the ACS since 1987,I view these podcasts as part of abroader commitment to improvingpublic understanding of chemistry,”Showalter said. He also works towardthat goal as a member of the ACSCommittee on Public Relations andCommunications and as a councilorfor the Central NM Section, ACS.
Podcasting is an increasingly pop-ular way of accessing news, informa-tion, and entertainment content fromthe Internet. The term was derivedfrom Apple’s “iPod,” a portable digitalaudio and video player, and “broad-casting.” Podcasts allow users to sub-scribe to a “feed” and receive new
files automatically whenever postedto the Internet. New installments ofScience Elements will be postedweekly and available without charge.
For more information, contact theACS Office of Communications [email protected]
Highlights of National Chemisty WeekPhotos Courtesy of Lois Durham
SANTA CLARA VALLEY SECTION2007 Section OfficersChair George Lechner 408-226-7262 [email protected] Chair David Parker 408-615-4961 [email protected] Elect Mark Kent 408-736-0989 [email protected] Karl Marhenke 831-688-4959 [email protected] Herb Silber 408-924-4954 [email protected]
Councilors2005-2007 Herb Silber 408-924-4954 [email protected] Abby Kennedy 650-837-8043 [email protected] Jack Riley 925-256-4050 [email protected] Ean Warren 650-329-4554 [email protected] Linda Brunauer 408-554-6947 [email protected] Sally Peters 650-812-4994 [email protected] Peter Rusch 650-961-8120 [email protected] George Lechner 408-226-7262 [email protected]
Alternate Councilors 2005-2007 Mark Kent 408-736-0989 [email protected] Ihab Darwish 650-343-4456 [email protected] David Parker 408-615-4961 [email protected] Bruce Raby 408-294-6718 [email protected] Stephanie Gehling 408-261-3974 [email protected] Natalie McClure 650-851-1052 [email protected] Maureen Scharberg 408-924-4966 [email protected] Ferenc Makra 415-730-8365 [email protected]
Newsletter Editor: Cinzia Muzzi 408-864-5790 [email protected]
ChemPloyment Abstracts Director: Charles Sullivan 650-359-0731 [email protected]
FUTURE MEETINGS
Nov 4-6 ACS ProSpectives Successful Biologics Philadelphia, PA
Nov 13 Section Dinner MeetingChemical Magic from the Grocery Store: Dispel ChemophobiaDr. Andy Sae Santa Clara, CA
Jan 7 Mosher Award Dinner and PresentationDr. Dennis P. CurranSanta Clara, CA
Mar 2-4 Pittconwww.pittcon.org
New Orleans, LA
Printed on recycled paper.
SANTA CLARA VALLEY SECTIONAMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETYP.O. Box 395, Palo Alto, CA 94302
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