Jian Hui Wu

Biography

Dr. Wu is an Associate Professor (tenured) at McGill University and Senior Investigator at the Lady Davis Institute. His expertise involves structure-based drug design, computational biology and organic chemistry. Dr. Wu’s research focuses on: 1) structure-based identification of novel small molecules that circumvent drug resistance due to mutation in drug targets, and small molecules that modulate protein-protein interactions; and 2) the development of methods in computational biology and chemistry.

Research Interest

The development of novel multifunctional antiandrogens as anti-prostate agents. Current treatment for advanced prostate cancer is to suppress androgen receptor (AR) signaling by castration and antiandrogens. However, lethal castration-resistant prostate cancer arises as a result of oncogenic re-activation of the AR. Mutations in AR contribute to aberrant activation of the AR, since a subset of AR mutations have turned the action of clinically used antiandrogen from an AR antagonist into an AR agonist, and the AR mutants themselves can be activated by a series of non-androgen ligands. Dr. Wu and his team have designed and synthesized a novel antiandrogen called SC97, which remains a pure antagonist of the wild type and the clinically relevant T877A, W741C and H874Y mutated androgen receptors. Compound SC97 has two bulky side chains and is a hybrid molecule of two dietary agents. SC97 is currently under preclinical development as a novel antiandrogen for castration-resistant prostate cancer.