Nucleic Acid Chemistry and Nucleic Acid Drugs: A Themed Issue in Honor of Professor Lihe Zhang on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday

Dear Colleagues,

In the past three decades, the chemistry and biology of nucleosides, nucleotides and oligonucleotides have played an important role in epigenetic regulation, post-transcription regulation, gene edition and signaling transduction as second messenger, as well as anti-cancer and anti-viral agents, etc. Among them, nucleoside, cyclic nucleotide, antisense oligonucleotide, siRNA, miRNA, lncRNA, DNAzyme, aptamer, and CRISPR/Cas, etc, have been the hot topics. However, there still remain many unsolved problems in this field. For instance, rational modifications and suitable pharmaceutical preparations in vivo then in clinic is not well realized, off-target effects, enzymatic stability and immunoreaction of oligonucleotides are still questionares. Professor Lihe Zhang (born in 1937) is a Professor at State Key Laboratory of Natural and Biomimetic Drugs, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Peking University, Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences (1995). He graduated from Department of Pharmacy, Beijing Medical College in 1958 and got graduate diploma of medicinal chemistry in 1967 from the same college (major in organic chemistry under the guidance of Professor Xu Wang, Academician of CAS). He worked in Department of Chemistry, University of Virginia, USA, as research associate from 1981–1983. In 1985, he became professor of medicinal chemistry in School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Beijing Medical University and was appointed dean of School of pharmaceutical Sciences, Beijing Medical University (1987–1999) and Director of Chemistry Division of National Natural Science Foundation of China (1999-2006). He is on the Editorial boards of a number of scientific journals including Med. Res. Rev., Curr. Top. Med. Chem. and Orga. Biomol. Chem., ChemMedChem. He is the Associate Editor of Eur. J. Med. Chem.; Editor in Chief of J. Chin. Med. Chem.; Associate Editor of J. Chem. Chin. Univ. His research interests include chemistry of nucleosides and nucleotides. He made a systematic study in the chemical and biological activity of intracellular messenger cADPR and cAMP. He made outstanding contributions to the research areas of ribozyme cleavage mechanism, the nature and recognition of artificial oligonucleotides, and anticancer and antiviral drugs of nucleosides and nucleotides. The journal is pleased to be publishing a commemorative issue in honor of Professor Li-he Zhang for his outstanding contributions on “nucleosides, nucleotides and oligonucleotides” on the occasion of his 80th birthday in 2017. This special issue of Molecules welcomes submission of unpublished manuscripts of original work or reviews on “Nucleosides, Nucleotides and Oligonucleotides”. 

Prof. Dr. Zhenjun Yang
Guest Editor

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