Abstract：

In human history, bioactive small molecules have had three primary uses: as medicines, agrochemicals, and biological tools. Among them, what our laboratory has done in the past was the discovery and use of biological tools. In addition to tool discovery, our laboratory has recently become interested in exploring another application of small molecules: small molecule tools for cell therapy. Although small molecule drugs will continue to be important, cell therapy will be a powerful approach to curing difficult diseases that small molecule drugs are unable to handle. However, there are a number of potential problems in bringing cell therapy technologies to the clinic, including high cost, potential contamination, low stability, and tumorigenesis. Stable, completely defined small molecules, which are usually amenable to cost-effective mass production, may be able to help the clinical application of cell therapy.

This presentation provides a quick overview of the recent results we obtained regarding two unique molecules. These molecules were originally discovered by phenotypic cell-based screenings of our in-house chemical libraries. Molecular understanding of their mechanisms of actions led to the design of small molecule tools that can be used both for basic cell biology research and for cell therapy applications.

CV：

Motonari Uesugi Professor, Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences, Kyoto University; B.S. 1990, Kyoto University; Ph.D. 1995, Kyoto Univ. (advisor: Yukio Sugiura); Postdoctoral Training, 1995-1998, Harvard University. (advisor: Gregory L. Verdine); Chemical Biology; Discovery and design of bioactive small molecules, and their usage for biological investigations; Tel: 81-774-38-3225, Fax: 81-774-38-3226,
E-mail: uesugi@scl.kyoto-u.ac.jp