Yu-Pu Juang

Biography

Dr. Yu-Pu Juang is a postdoctoral researcher working in Dr. Cernak’s lab, University of Michigan, and his research focused on the development of conservation medicines and identification of bioactive natural products. Yu-Pu Juang obtained his bachelor's degree from the Department of Pharmacy, School of Medicine, National Taiwan University, Taiwan. His summer project was supervised by Professor Chia-Ron Yang to investigate protein expression alteration in cancer cells treated with HDAC6 inhibitors. In 2015, Yu-Pu started his PhD program at School of Pharmacy, National Taiwan University, under the supervision of Dr. Pi-Hui Liang. His PhD research was focused in the synthesis, cytotoxic mechanism and compound distribution of anti-leukemic aminosugar-bearing saponins with chemical and biological methods. During COVID-19 pandemic, he was involved in the project of drug repurposing and natural product screening to identify potential anti-SARS-CoV-2 compounds. To advance the project, a series of niclosamide derivatives were synthesized, and a derivative was found to exhibit ten-fold better anti-SARS-CoV-2 activity and higher stability than niclosamide. He received his Ph.D. degree in 2022. After a year of mandatory military service, he joined Dr. Liang's lab to work as a postdoctoral researcher and his work focused on development of juglone-derived antiplatelet agents.