Welcome to the Le lab!
Natural product-inspired drug discovery
Welcome to the Le lab!
Natural product-inspired drug discovery
About Us
Hoang Le has been a Program Officer at the National Institute on Drug Abuse since May 7, 2023. We no longer accept new collaboration, postdocs, graduate students, or undergraduate students.
We are a synthetic medicinal chemistry laboratory. The research in our lab is inspired by natural products and aims to discover and develop novel biologically relevant but synthetically challenging natural product derivatives for the treatment of cancers, infectious diseases, and neurological disorders. Because natural products are synthesized by living organisms, they are naturally optimized for various biological functions, such as binding to specific biomolecules or target proteins. Natural products possess tremendous structural and unique chemical diversity and continue to provide an unmatched source of new therapeutic agents and chemical scaffolds for drug discovery. We use organic synthesis and computational modeling as primary tools to design and synthesize potential therapeutic agents and collaborate with other research groups to evaluate their biological activities and investigate their molecular mechanisms of action. When necessary, we will develop novel methodologies to form strategic bonds to provide easy access to libraries of important scaffolds for biological activity screening. These newly synthesized compounds can also be used as chemical tools to study and expose new areas of biology.
Recent News
- February 12, 2025: Our latest manuscript was accepted for publication in Medicinal Chemistry Research. We reported our discovery of a new chemical transformation: a mild and catalyst-free α-benzoyloxylation of tertiary amides. This provides a direct and easy access to α-benzoyloxy amides and α-hydroxy amides, which are valuable molecules in pharmaceutical and agricultural fields. Congratulations, Leo and Imdad!
- January 23, 2025: Our latest manuscript on the discovery of several 1,4-naphthoquinone-based compounds that have activity against the larvae of Aedes aegypti (the yellow fever mosquitos) was accepted for publication in Pest Management Science. Congratulations, Seong Jong and Imdad!
- June 27, 2024: Ben successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation. Congratulations, Ben!
- November 16, 2023: Hoang's latest manuscript from postdoctoral work got accepted for publication in iScience.
- October 23, 2023: Ayoub successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation. Congratulations, Ayoub!
- July 28, 2023: Our latest manuscript got accepted for publication in Chemistry and Biodiversity. Congratulations, Ayoub!
- May 7, 2023: Hoang Le is now a Program Officer at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. We no longer accept new collaboration, postdocs, graduate students, or undergraduate students.
- April 18, 2023: Tristan was awarded an ACS Undergraduate Research Scholar Award by our ACS Ole Miss local section. Congratulations, Tristan!
- April 15, 2023: Seth McCaughan was named to the University of Mississippi Who’s Who Class of 2022-2023. Congratulations, Seth!
- April 14, 2023: Seth McCaughan and Tristan Tran successfully defended their Honors theses. Congratulations, Seth and Tristan!! Also, Benjamin Sawyer won the P1 Teaching Assistant of the Year Award. Congratulations, Ben!
- March 30, 2023: Benjamin Sawyer successfully defended his prospectus. Congratulations, Ben!
- March 22, 2023: Imdadul Khan was selected by the graduate school to be one of the two class marshals for the graduation this year. Congratulations, Imdad!! We are incredibly proud of your achievements!
- March 17, 2023: The first book chapter from our lab on Antimalarial Drugs in the textbook Medicinal Chemistry of Chemotherapeutic Agents (published by Academic Press, March 2023) is now available online. Congratulations, Ben and Imdad! Great job!
- March 14, 2023: Hoang was invited to be a guest editor for a collection of research methods by the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE) on the topic “Current Research Methods in Natural Product-Inspired Drug Discovery”.
- February 2, 2023: Our latest manuscript got accepted for publication in ACS Chemical Neuroscience. Congratulations, Nick, Imdad, Seong Jong, and Maddie! Great work!
- December 21, 2022: Our latest manuscript was published in Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry. Congratulations, Imdad, Nick, Imran, and Seong Jong! Great job!
- December 9, 2022: The ACS Ole Miss Local Section was awarded a 2022 Diversity, Equity, and Respect (DEIR) Grant from the American Chemical Society for the proposal titled "Ole Miss Summer REU DEIR Workshop". This is the second year that the ACS Ole Miss Local Section has received a DEIR grant. Congratulations!
- November 22, 2022: Imdadul Khan successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation. Congratulations, Imdad! Good luck on your joint postdoctoral position at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and Cleveland Clinic!
- November 16, 2022: Hoang became Chair of the ACS Ole Miss Local Section.
- October 31, 2022: Ben Sawyer was selected to be one of the finalists for the Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) competition at UM. Congratulations and good luck, Ben!
- October 25, 2022: Hoang was invited to serve as a reviewer for the NSF Graduate Research Fellowships Program (GRFP).
- October 25, 2022: Leo Yang presented our lab's research at the Rho Chi Research Day.
- October 14, 2022: Hoang was invited to serve on the Resolutions Committee for the AACP Chemistry Section.
- October 11, 2022: Imdadul Khan, Ben Sawyer, and Leo Yang presented our lab's research at the SOP's Research Day.
- October 5, 2022: Leo Yang won the Walgreens Multilingual Scholarship Award. Congratulations, Leo!
- September 28, 2022: Tristan Tran and Seth McCaughan received funding from the Honors College for their Honors thesis research projects. Congratulations, Tristan and Seth!
- September 19, 2022: Imdadul Khan received an offer for a postdoctoral position in the Gryder and Stauffer labs (joint position) at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and Cleveland Clinic. Congratulations, Imdad!
- September 16, 2022: Our latest manuscript was accepted for publication in European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. Congratulations, Imdad, Ben, and Nick!
- September 5, 2022: Our latest manuscript was accepted and published in Chemistry and Biodiversity. Congratulations, Ayoub!
- August 19, 2022: The Office of Technology Commercialization filed an international/U.S. patent application for our collaborative work with the Paris lab on allopregnanolone analogues for HIV viremia and neurotoxicity protection.
- July 23 - 27, 2022: Imdadul Khan and Ben Sawyer presented our lab's research at the AACP's annual meeting in Grapevine, Texas.
- July 9, 2022: We published an invited editorial with our collaborators at UPenn in Translational Perioperative and Pain Medicine.
- May 31, 2022: Zeyad Ibrahim joined us as a student in the ARISE program. Welcome, Zeyad!
- May 20 - 22, 2022: Hoang attended the 2022 ACS Leadership Institute.
- May 18 - 20, 2022: Hoang served as an oral and poster presentation judge, and Imdadul Khan and Ben Sawyer presented our lab's research at the 2022 MALTO Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy Meeting-in-Miniature. Imdadul won the Thomas L. Lemke Outstanding Poster Presentation Award. Congratulations, Imdadul!
- May 7, 2022: Leo Yang graduated with a B.S. degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences. Congratulations, Leo!
- April 29, 2022: Ben Sawyer was elected President of BioMolecular Sciences Student Advocates. Congratulations, Ben!
- April 25, 2022: Hoang gave an invited lecture at Northwestern University.
- April 19, 2022: Md Imdadul Khan was awarded an ACS Graduate Research Scholar Award, and Leo Yang was awarded an ACS Undergraduate Research Scholar Award by our ACS Ole Miss local section. Congratulations, Imdad and Leo!
- April 12, 2022: Hoang served as a Poster Abstract Reviewer for the 2022 AACP Annual Meeting.
- April 7, 2022: Ben Sawyer successfully defended his original research proposal (ORP) and has advanced to Ph.D. candidacy. Congratulations, Ben!
- April 1, 2022: Leo Yang won the SOP's Distinguished Citation for Outstanding Contributions to the Research Mission of BioMolecular Sciences, and Tristan Tran won the SOP's Helping Hands Award. Congratulations, Leo and Tristan!
- March 11, 2022: Our manuscript on the synthesis of 3,4,5-trisubstituted isoxazoles in water was accepted for publication in Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry. Congratulations, Imran, Imdad, and Seong Jong!
- February 24, 2022: Seth McCaughan joined our lab as an undergrad researcher. Welcome, Seth!
- February 15, 2022: We submitted our very first book chapter, Chapter 11 Antimalarial Drugs, for the book Medicinal Chemistry of Chemotherapeutic Agents, edited by Pratap Acharya and Michio Kurosu, published by Elsevier/Academic Press with the anticipated publication date of December 1, 2022. The book can be preordered here on the Elsevier website. Congratulations, Ben and Imdad!
- January 12, 2022: Hoang served as a reviewer for the NSF Graduate Research Fellowships Program (GRFP).
- January 7, 2022: Our paper on salvinorin dual kappa and mu opioid receptor agonists was accepted for publication in ChemMedChem. Congratulations, Nick!
- November 19, 2021: Hoang was selected for the National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN)'s Grant Writing Coaching program.
- November 18, 2021: Imdadul Khan successfully defended his prospectus. Congratulations, Imdadul!
- November 17, 2021: Hoang was elected Chair-Elect of the American Chemical Society Local Section at the University of Mississippi.
- November 16, 2021: Hoang was asked to serve on the 2022 AACP Chemistry Section Awards Committee.
- November 8, 2021: Hoang served as a reviewer for the NSF SBIR/STTR program.
- October 29, 2021: The Research Topic "Targeting Cancer Metabolic Reprogramming for Cancer Therapy" (Hoang is the Topic Editor) in Frontiers in Drug Discovery is now open for submission.
- October 3, 2021: Our collaborative review paper got published in the Journal of Neuroendocrinology. Congratulations, Nick!
- August 30, 2021: Matthew Bee joined our lab as an undergrad researcher. Welcome, Matthew!
- August 22-26, 2021: Hoang gave an oral presentation; Imdadul and Ben gave poster presentations on our research at the ACS National Meeting in Atlanta, GA. Well done, Imdadul and Ben!
- August 12, 2021: Hoang served as a reviewer for the NSF SBIR/STTR program.
- August 2, 2021: Hoang was appointed as an Associate Editor of the journal Frontiers in Drug Discovery.
- July 7, 2021: Our collaborative paper got published in Molecules.
- June 22, 2021: Tristan Tran joined our lab as an undergrad researcher. Welcome, Tristan!
- May 24, 2021: Jiaxin (Leo) Yang joined our lab as an undergrad researcher. Welcome, Leo!
- April 29, 2021: Nick Akins graduated with a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences. He is starting his postdoctoral work with Dr. Dennis Liotta at Emory University in May. Congratulations, Nick!
- April 27, 2021: Ben Sawyer received a GSC Research Grant for his project "Synthesis and Assessment of Potential Carbazole-Based Antimalarials". Congratulations, Ben!
