Debra Wallace - Pauline Chiu - Princess Chulabhorn - Ada Yonath

Pauline Chiu obtained her B. Sc. (Honours) in Chemistry from the University of Toronto. Under scholarship support from the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), she studied with Prof. Adrian G. Brook at the University of Toronto to obtain her M. Sc. Degree on the chemistry of silenes - compounds having a silicon-carbon double bond-synthesized via the Brook rearrangement. She then joined the research group of Prof. Mark Lautens at the same university for her Ph. D. studies on the ring-opening reactions of oxabicyclic compounds.

Pauline proceeded to do postdoctoral research work under NSERC support on the total synthesis of gelsemine with Prof. Samuel J. Danishefsky at Columbia University, New York. Having called North America home for over 20 years, Pauline moved to her birthplace, Hong Kong, to join the research staff at the University of Hong Kong. She has been Assistant Professor at the Department of Chemistry since 2001.

Her research interests include cascade reactions, reductive aldol reactions [4+3] cycloadditions, and their applications in the total synthesis of natural products. A recent interest has been in the bioactivity-directed isolation of active principles from traditional Chinese medicinal herbs, an area which could have significant dividends in providing drug leads but is still in its infancy in terms of the application of a rigorous scientific approach.

Pauline extends her spirit of experimentation and exploration into the areas of food, wine, travel, movies and philosophy with her equally daring husband, Joseph, and the enjoyment of all these is exponentially multiplied in the company of good friends. She is interested in the collection of mineral specimens from all over the world.

Prof. Chiu talks about “The total synthesis of pseudolaric acid-an anti-mitotic and anti-cancer natural product”. The pseudolaric acids are natural products isolated from the traditional Chinese medicinal herb, tujinpi. The first asymmetric total synthesis of these tubulin-destabilizing compounds has been achieved using the carbene cyclization cycloaddition cascade reaction as a key transformation. The successes and failures along the roller-coaster ride to the final target is not an unusual one for total synthesis projects and this story hopes to encourage those engaged in research to persist and not give up!