Advances in Nucleoside/Nucleotides and Nucleic Acid Chemistry: A Theme Issue in Honor of Prof. Dr. Piet Herdewijn

Dear Colleagues,

Professor Piet Herdewijn (born, Aalst, Belgium, 1954) holds a PhD from KU Leuven working on the synthesis of carbocyclic beta-lactam antibiotics (1981) and a habilitation working on nucleoside analogues as anti-HIV agents. He worked as a fellow of the A von Humboldt foundation at the University of Konstanz, Germany, with Professor W. Pfleiderer on the synthesis of modified oligonucleotides. He then became an Associate Professor at the University of Ghent (Belgium) and the University of Evry-Val-d’Essone (France). He was later promoted to Full Professor at KU Leuven in 1993 and Emeritus Professor in 2019. Professor Herdewijn served as Director of the Laboratory of Medicinal Chemistry at the Rega Institute and is also a member of the Royal Academy of Medicine, Belgium. Professor Herdewijn has mentored 200 PhD and Postdoctoral students in his laboratory and has published over 730 articles.

Professor Herdewijn has made extensive contributions to bioorganic and medicinal chemistry, in particular in the field of nucleosides, nucleotides, and nucleic acids. In that regard, he was one of the founders of the International Society for Nucleosides, Nucleotides, and Nucleic Acids (IS3NA) and continues to play a major role in the Society even today. He developed numerous synthetic methods and schemes to make synthetically challenging nucleoside analogues more readily available. His main focus in medicinal chemistry has been towards developing inhibitors for infectious diseases (antivirals, antibiotics) as well as immunology. He was a pioneer in the development of anti-HIV nucleosides but also contributed to research on anti-HSV, anti-HBV, and anti-HCV compounds with different modes of actions. In immunology, he worked on the problem of immunotolerance. He has contributed fundamentally to research on backbone modified nucleic acids, design, synthesis, structural research and applications, such as HNA and ZNA. He is also a pioneer in chemical synthetic biology, by in vivo implementation of artificial nucleic acids and genes.

It is with this in mind that we honor him on the occasion of his retirement for his outstanding achievements in the areas of nucleoside/tide and nucleic acid chemistry, medicinal chemistry, and immunology, as well as his critical role in advancing the field. He remains an inspiration to all and we are pleased to invite you to submit a publication for this Special Issue.

Prof. Katherine Seley-Radtke
Guest Editor

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