About

Weiping Tang is the Janis Apinis Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the School of Pharmacy and Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor at UW-Madison. He is also the Director of the Medicinal Chemistry Center at the School of Pharmacy and holds a faculty appointment with the Department of Chemistry in the College of Letters and Science. Dr. Tang's educational background includes a BS in Chemistry from Peking University, an MS in Chemistry from New York University, and a PhD in Organic Chemistry from Stanford University. He completed postdoctoral training in Medicinal Chemistry, Chemical Biology, and Drug Discovery at Harvard University. His research focuses on developing novel therapeutics through a multidisciplinary approach that integrates synthetic chemistry, medicinal chemistry, carbohydrate chemistry, computational chemistry, chemical biology, biochemistry, cell biology, and biomedical engineering. Dr. Tang's group works closely with members from diverse scientific and cultural backgrounds, aiming to advance therapeutic development. His contributions are recognized through his leadership roles and his involvement in the academic and pharmaceutical sectors, fostering successful careers for his students and alumni.

Research topics

• Chemistry
• Biology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computational biology
• Bioinformatics
• Machine Learning
• Computer Science
• Photochemistry
• Materials science
• Biochemistry
• Pharmacology
• Microbiology
• Ecology
• Cell biology
• Organic chemistry
• Combinatorial chemistry

Selected publications

• AI is a viable alternative to high throughput screening: a 318-target study

  Scientific Reports · 2024 · 119 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • Machine Learning

  High throughput screening (HTS) is routinely used to identify bioactive small molecules. This requires physical compounds, which limits coverage of accessible chemical space. Computational approaches combined with vast on-demand chemical libraries can access far greater chemical space, provided that the predictive accuracy is sufficient to identify useful molecules. Through the largest and most diverse virtual HTS campaign reported to date, comprising 318 individual projects, we demonstrate that our AtomNet® convolutional neural network successfully finds novel hits across every major therapeutic area and protein class. We address historical limitations of computational screening by demonstrating success for target proteins without known binders, high-quality X-ray crystal structures, or manual cherry-picking of compounds. We show that the molecules selected by the AtomNet® model are novel drug-like scaffolds rather than minor modifications to known bioactive compounds. Our empirical results suggest that computational methods can substantially replace HTS as the first step of small-molecule drug discovery.

  DOI

• Development of Triantennary N-Acetylgalactosamine Conjugates as Degraders for Extracellular Proteins

  ACS Central Science · 2021 · 209 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Biochemistry
  • Chemistry
  • Cell biology

  -acetylgalactosamine (tri-GalNAc), was conjugated to biotin, antibodies, or fragments of antibodies to generate a new class of degraders. We demonstrated that the extracellular protein targets could be successfully internalized and delivered into lysosome for degradation in liver cell lines specifically by these degraders. This work will add a new dimension to TPD with cell type specificity.

  DOI

• Transition Metal-Catalyzed Selective Carbon–Carbon Bond Cleavage of Vinylcyclopropanes in Cycloaddition Reactions

  Chemical Reviews · 2020 · 321 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Chemistry
  • Photochemistry
  • Combinatorial chemistry

  In this review, transition metal-catalyzed methodologies and applications that exploit C-C bond cleavage of vinylcyclopropanes (VCPs) are summarized with a focus on cycloaddition and related addition reactions. Transition metals, including palladium, nickel, iron, ruthenium, rhodium, cobalt, and iridium, can catalyze the cleavage of C-C bonds in activated or nonactivated VCPs. Additionally, these bond-breaking reactions can occur as intra- or intermolecular processes. The properties of activated and nonactivated VCPs are discussed in the Introduction. Various transition metal-catalyzed cycloaddition and addition reactions involving the cleavage of C-C bonds in activated VCPs are then discussed in the next chapter. The transition metal-catalyzed cycloadditions involving the cleavage of C-C in nonactivated VCPs are summarized in the following chapter. Finally, challenges and potential opportunities are outlined in the last chapter.

  DOI

• A marine microbiome antifungal targets urgent-threat drug-resistant fungi

  Science · 2020 · 172 citations

  • Biology
  • Computational biology
  • Microbiology

  Leveraging the microbiomes of marine animals and cutting-edge metabolomics and genomic tools, we identified encouraging lead antifungal molecules with in vivo efficacy. The most promising lead, turbinmicin, displays potent in vitro and mouse-model efficacy toward multiple-drug-resistant fungal pathogens, exhibits a wide safety index, and functions through a fungal-specific mode of action, targeting Sec14 of the vesicular trafficking pathway. The efficacy, safety, and mode of action distinct from other antifungal drugs make turbinmicin a highly promising antifungal drug lead to help address devastating global fungal pathogens such as

  DOI

Recent grants

• Transition Metal-Catalyzed Novel Cycloadditions for Organic Synthesis

  NSF · $405k · 2015–2019

• Development of Broad-Spectrum Antiviral Therapeutics by Destabilizing the Main Protease of Coronaviruses

  NIH · $427k · 2020–2023

• Development of Cyclopropyl Metal Carbene Based Methods for Organic Synthesis

  NIH · $1.5M · 2009–2015

• Development of New Strategies for the Synthesis of Bacterial Carbohydrates

  NSF · $450k · 2020–2024

• Develop Catalytic Methods to Streamline the Assembly of Oligosaccharides

  NIH · $2.2M · 2017–2022

Frequent coauthors

• Xiaoxun Li

  Shandong University

  53 shared

• Wangze Song

  Dalian University of Technology

  49 shared

• Casi M. Schienebeck

  Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals (United States)

  36 shared

• Stuart L. Schreiber

  Harvard University

  32 shared

• Dongxu Shu

  32 shared

• Ilia A. Guzei

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  31 shared

• Edward F. Greenberg

  AbbVie (United States)

  29 shared

• Gabrielle Winston‐McPherson

  29 shared

Labs

• Tang Research GroupPI

Education

• Ph.D., Chemistry

  University of Wisconsin-Madison

  1993

• M.S., Chemistry

  University of Wisconsin-Madison

  1989

• B.S., Chemistry

  University of Science and Technology of China

  1986

Awards & honors

• Boehringer Ingelheim Predoctoral Fellowship (2002)
• Amgen Predoctoral Fellowship (2003)
• HHMI Postdoctoral Fellowship (2005-2007)
• Thieme Synlett/Synthesis Journal Award (2010)
• ACS Young Academic Investigator Symposium (2011)

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