James Fuchs, PhD

Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies

Professor

Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy

634 Riffe Building

Professional Interests

Natural products have always played a key role for medicinal chemists in the process of drug discovery. Employing the structural scaffolds and biological activities of these compounds as a starting point, our group uses synthetic chemistry as a tool to probe biological problems. Specifically, Dr. Fuchs’ lab utilizes synthetic methods to prepare bioactive natural products and their analogues, gain insights into the structure–activity relationships of ligand/receptor systems, and investigate biosynthetic pathways. Ultimately, the goal of this research is not simply to prepare these compounds, but to improve upon their activity and pharmacological profiles by focusing on their properties.

Education

2007, Postdoctoral Fellow, The Scripps Research Institute, Medicinal/Organic Chemistry
2005, PhD, Pennsylvania State University, Organic Chemistry
1998, BS, cum laude, University Honors, Honors in Chemistry, University of Toledo, Chemistry

Journal Articles

Haque A, Rahman MA, Fuchs JR, Chen Z, Khuri FR, Shin DM, Amin ARMR. Corrigendum to "FLLL12 induces apoptosis in lung cancer cells through a p53/p73-independent but death receptor 5-dependent pathway" [Canc. Lett. 363 (2015) 166-175]. Cancer Lett. 2021 Feb 1;498:249-250. doi: 10.1016/j.canlet.2020.07.039. Epub 2020 Oct 20. Erratum for: Cancer Lett. 2015 Jul 28;363(2):166-75. PMID: 33092912.

Zhang Y, Tan CY, Spjut RW, Fuchs JR, Kinghorn AD, Rakotondraibe LH. Specialized metabolites of the United States lichen Niebla homalea and their antiproliferative activities. Phytochemistry. 2020 Dec;180:112521. doi: 10.1016/j.phytochem.2020.112521. Epub 2020 Oct 21. PMID: 33099129; PMCID: PMC7970382.

Bester SM, Wei G, Zhao H, Adu-Ampratwum D, Iqbal N, Courouble VV, Francis AC, Annamalai AS, Singh PK, Shkriabai N, Van Blerkom P, Morrison J, Poeschla EM, Engelman AN, Melikyan GB, Griffin PR, Fuchs JR, Asturias FJ, Kvaratskhelia M. Structural and mechanistic bases for a potent HIV-1 capsid inhibitor. Science. 2020 Oct 16;370(6514):360-364. doi: 10.1126/science.abb4808. PMID: 33060363; PMCID: PMC7831379.

May DS, Crnkovic CM, Krunic A, Wilson TA, Fuchs JR, Orjala JE. <sup>15</sup>N Stable Isotope Labeling and Comparative Metabolomics Facilitates Genome Mining in Cultured Cyanobacteria. ACS Chem Biol. 2020 Mar 20;15(3):758-765. doi: 10.1021/acschembio.9b00993. Epub 2020 Mar 4. PMID: 32083834; PMCID: PMC7297037.

Cockroft NT, Cheng X, Fuchs JR. STarFish: A Stacked Ensemble Target Fishing Approach and its Application to Natural Products. J Chem Inf Model. 2019 Nov 25;59(11):4906-4920. doi: 10.1021/acs.jcim.9b00489. Epub 2019 Oct 24. PMID: 31589422; PMCID: PMC7291623.

Zahid MSH, Johnson MM, Tokarski RJ 2nd, Satoskar AR, Fuchs JR, Bachelder EM, Ainslie KM. Evaluation of synergy between host and pathogen-directed therapies against intracellular Leishmania donovani. Int J Parasitol Drugs Drug Resist. 2019 Aug;10:125-132. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpddr.2019.08.004. Epub 2019 Aug 21. PMID: 31493763; PMCID: PMC6731340.

Deblais L, Helmy YA, Kumar A, Antwi J, Kathayat D, Acuna UM, Huang HC, de Blanco EC, Fuchs JR, Rajashekara G. Novel narrow spectrum benzyl thiophene sulfonamide derivatives to control Campylobacter. J Antibiot (Tokyo). 2019 Jul;72(7):555-565. doi: 10.1038/s41429-019-0168-x. Epub 2019 Mar 27. PMID: 30918323.

Koneru PC, Francis AC, Deng N, Rebensburg SV, Hoyte AC, Lindenberger J, Adu- Ampratwum D, Larue RC, Wempe MF, Engelman AN, Lyumkis D, Fuchs JR, Levy RM, Melikyan GB, Kvaratskhelia M. HIV-1 integrase tetramers are the antiviral target of pyridine-based allosteric integrase inhibitors. Elife. 2019 May 23;8:e46344. doi: 10.7554/eLife.46344. PMID: 31120420; PMCID: PMC6581505.

Ren Y, de Blanco EJC, Fuchs JR, Soejarto DD, Burdette JE, Swanson SM, Kinghorn AD. Potential Anticancer Agents Characterized from Selected Tropical Plants. J Nat Prod. 2019 Mar 22;82(3):657-679. doi: 10.1021/acs.jnatprod.9b00018. Epub 2019 Mar 4. PMID: 30830783; PMCID: PMC6441492.

Fosu SC, Hambira CM, Chen AD, Fuchs JR, Nagib DA. Site-Selective C-H Functionalization of (Hetero)Arenes via Transient, Non-Symmetric Iodanes. Chem. 2019 Feb 14;5(2):417-428. doi: 10.1016/j.chempr.2018.11.007. Epub 2018 Dec 13. PMID: 31032461; PMCID: PMC6481961.