Michael E. Jung is Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Michael Jung was born May 14, 1947 in New Orleans, Louisiana

Louisiana

Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...

. He received a B.A. from Rice University

Rice University

William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University or Rice, is a private research university located on a heavily wooded campus in Houston, Texas, United States...

 in Houston, Texas

Texas

Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

 in 1969 and a Ph.D. from Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 in 1973 where he did research with Gilbert Stork

Gilbert Stork

Gilbert Stork is a U.S. organic chemist. He is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Chemistry Emeritus at Columbia University. The Stork enamine synthesis is named in his honor.-Education:...

. He then obtained a NATO Postdoctoral Fellowship to work with Albert Eschenmoser

Albert Eschenmoser

Albert Eschenmoser is a Swiss chemist working at the ETH Zurich and The Scripps Research Institute.His work together with Lavoslav Ružička on terpenes and the postulation of squalene cyclization to form lanosterol improved the insight into steroid biosynthesis.In the early 1960s, Eschenmoser began...

 at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in Zürich

Zürich

Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...

, Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

. In 1974, he joined the faculty at UCLA, where he has spent his career.

Michael Jung's research is focused on the development of new reactions for organic synthesis

Organic synthesis

Organic synthesis is a special branch of chemical synthesis and is concerned with the construction of organic compounds via organic reactions. Organic molecules can often contain a higher level of complexity compared to purely inorganic compounds, so the synthesis of organic compounds has...

, including the Jung "non-aldol aldol" protocol, an alternate method for obtaining aldol

Aldol

An aldol or aldol adduct is a beta-hydroxy ketone or aldehyde, and is the product of aldol addition ....

 products without using the classical aldol reaction

Aldol reaction

The aldol reaction is a powerful means of forming carbon–carbon bonds in organic chemistry.Discovered independently by Charles-Adolphe Wurtz and Alexander Porfyrevich Borodin in 1872, the reaction combines two carbonyl compounds to form a new β-hydroxy carbonyl compound...

. He has also developed chemical syntheses for a variety of natural product

Natural product

A natural product is a chemical compound or substance produced by a living organism - found in nature that usually has a pharmacological or biological activity for use in pharmaceutical drug discovery and drug design...

s with antitumor and antiviral

Antiviral drug

Antiviral drugs are a class of medication used specifically for treating viral infections. Like antibiotics for bacteria, specific antivirals are used for specific viruses...

 properties including tedanolides, oxetanocin, halomon

Halomon

Halomon is a polyhalogenated monoterpene first isolated from the marine red algae Portieria hornemannii. Halomon has attracted research interest because of its promising profile of selective cytotoxicity that suggests its potential use as an antitumor agent.Halomon is in a class of chemical...

s, and xestobergsterol. Other research interests include the bridged Robinson annulation

Robinson annulation

The Robinson annulation is an organic reaction used to create a six-member ring α,β-unsaturated cyclic ketone, using a ketone and methyl vinyl ketone...

 and the mixed Lewis acid

Lewis acid

]The term Lewis acid refers to a definition of acid published by Gilbert N. Lewis in 1923, specifically: An acid substance is one which can employ a lone pair from another molecule in completing the stable group of one of its own atoms. Thus, H+ is a Lewis acid, since it can accept a lone pair,...

 Diels-Alder process.

Jung's research group developed an antagonist

Receptor antagonist

A receptor antagonist is a type of receptor ligand or drug that does not provoke a biological response itself upon binding to a receptor, but blocks or dampens agonist-mediated responses...

 of the androgen receptor

Androgen receptor

The androgen receptor , also known as NR3C4 , is a type of nuclear receptor that is activated by binding of either of the androgenic hormones testosterone or dihydrotestosterone in the cytoplasm and then translocating into the nucleus...

, MDV3100

MDV3100

MDV3100 is an experimental androgen receptor antagonist drug developed by the pharmaceutical company Medivation for the treatment of castration-resistant prostate cancer currently in Phase 3 clinical trials. Results so far have been encouraging; Medivation has reported up to an 89% decrease in...

, which is in phase 1/2 clinical trial

Clinical trial

Clinical trials are a set of procedures in medical research and drug development that are conducted to allow safety and efficacy data to be collected for health interventions...

s for the treatment of hormone refractory prostate cancer

Prostate cancer

Prostate cancer is a form of cancer that develops in the prostate, a gland in the male reproductive system. Most prostate cancers are slow growing; however, there are cases of aggressive prostate cancers. The cancer cells may metastasize from the prostate to other parts of the body, particularly...

.

Awards won by Michael Jung include the American Chemical Society

American Chemical Society

The American Chemical Society is a scientific society based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. Founded in 1876 at New York University, the ACS currently has more than 161,000 members at all degree-levels and in all fields of chemistry, chemical...

's Arthur C. Cope

Arthur C. Cope

Arthur C. Cope was a highly successful and influential organic chemist and member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is credited with the development of several important chemical reactions which bear his name including the Cope elimination and the Cope rearrangement.Cope was born on June...

 Scholar Award, the Glenn T. Seaborg

Glenn T. Seaborg

Glenn Theodore Seaborg was an American scientist who won the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "discoveries in the chemistry of the transuranium elements", contributed to the discovery and isolation of ten elements, and developed the actinide concept, which led to the current arrangement of the...

Award, and the Gold Shield Faculty Prize.