NAKASHIMA Yu Assistant Professor
NAKASHIMA Yu
AffiliationLaboratory of Natural Products Chemistry, Section of Natural Products & Drug Discovery, Division of Medicinal Resources, Department of Research and Development
Research fieldsNatural Products Chemistry
Campus careerPh.D. (Pharmaceutical Sciences)
Biography University of Toyama Faculty Research Profiles
Education
Mar. 2013, B.Sc at Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Japan
Mar. 2015, M.Sc at Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Japan
Mar. 2018, Ph.D. at Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Japan
Job career
Apr. 2018, Postdoctoral Researcher at Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Japan
Dec. 2018, Postdoctral Fellow at Department of Chemistry, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Jan. 2021 Assistant Professor, Institute of Natural Medicine, University of Toyama, Japan
Research theme
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Outline of the research
Natural product chemistry is a necessary discipline that plays a valuable role in biomedical research and drug discovery. Our work focuses on the chemical and structural biology of biosynthetic enzymes that generate complex natural products. Our laboratory also has a growing interest in how to play natural products as drugs in humans. These researches incorporate techniques of structural biology, such as X-ray crystallography, and practices rooted in chemical, biological, and analytical sciences.
Thoughts on research
Whenever I see the complicated skeleton of natural products, I imagine living organisms' evolution on the earth. Why and how to produce these unique structures? The study of natural products offers an excellent strategy toward identifying these questions. The answer will lead to the development of drug discovery.
Paper
Nakashima, Y., Brewitz, L., Tumber, A., Salah, E., Schofield, C. J. “2-Oxoglutarate derivatives can selectively enhance or inhibit the activity of human oxygenases”
Nature Commun., 12, Article number: 6478 (2021).
Brewitz, L., Nakashima, Y., Schofield, C. J. “Synthesis of 2-oxoglutarate derivatives and their evaluation as cosubstrates and inhibitors of human aspartate/asparagine-β-hydroxylase”
Chem. Sci., 12, 1327-1342 (2021).
Nakashima, Y., Mitsuhashi, T., Matsuda, Y., Senda, M., Sato, H., Yamazaki, M., Uchiyama, M., Senda, T., Abe, I. “Structural and computational bases for dramatic skeletal rearrangement in anditomin biosynthesis”
J. Am. Chem. Soc., 140, 9743-9750 (2018).
Nakashima, Y., Mori, T., Nakamura, H., Awakawa, T., Hoshino, S., Senda, M., Senda, T., Abe, I. “Structure function and engineering of multifunctional non-heme iron dependent oxygenases in fungal meroterpenoid biosynthesis”
Nature Commun., 9, Article number: 104 (2018).
Wakimoto, T., Egami, Y., Nakashima, Y., Wakimoto, Y., Mori, T., Awakawa, T., Ito, T., Kenmoku, H., Asakawa, Y., Piel, J., Abe, I., “Calyculin biogenesis from a pyrophosphate protoxin produced by a sponge symbiont”
Nature Chem. Biol., 10, 648-655 (2014).
keyword
Natural Products, Biosynthesis, Structural Analysis, Enzymatic Engineering
