Professor Luet Wong receives ‘Suzhou Foreign Expert Workshop’ award

OSCAR’s Biocatalysis, Enzyme Evolution and Synthetic Biology laboratory led by Prof. Luet Wong has received the “Foreign Expert Workshop” award. Similar to a ‘Suzhou International Academician Workstation’, a ‘Suzhou Foreign Expert Workshop’ will function as an inhouse technological innovation platform and serve to attract eminent academics to undertake research in Suzhou. Prof. Luet Wong is the second OSCAR PI to have received this recognition after OSCAR Deputy Director, Prof. Mark Moloney, whose Surface Materials Chemistry lab at OSCAR was granted in June 2020.

Funding for established workstations is contingent upon research progress made during the first year. Workshops receive financial subsidies capped at 300,000 RMB per year, with the possibility for each workshop to apply up to three times.

Prof. Luet Wong specialises in the modification of enzymes to proceed chemical reactions that are difficult or impossible by conventional chemical methods. At OSCAR, he steers research work in a) protein engineering of cytochrome P450 to a versatile biocatalyst in expending size and diversity of small molecule drug-fragment compound library, and b) construction of evolvable biosynthetic system via directed evolution to synthesize desired natural-occurred compounds and their derivatives.

 

Biosynthesis of natural-occuring compounds and diversification by P450 catalysed C–H bond oxidation. The starting material could be as simple as single sugar, such as glucose shown in this figure; M1 – M4: synthesized compound with various structure; bubbles with number: oxidated metabolites generated via P450 catalysed reaction.

Prof. Luet Wong

• Professor of Inorganic Chemistry, University of Oxford

• The Jennifer Green Fellow

• Tutor in Chemistry at St Hugh’s College

• Founded Oxford Biotrans Ltd.

• Won the 2018 Emerging Technology award of the Royal Society of Chemistry, UK