June 20, 2011
Kuo-Hsiung Lee, PhD, the Kenan Distinguished Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, has been awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, by the government of Japan for his contributions to the development of medicinal chemistry in that nation.
In his forty-one-year career at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, more than eighty Japanese scholars have honed their understanding of medicinal chemistry under Dr. Lee’s tutelage.
The Order of the Rising Sun was established in 1875 as the first national decoration awarded by the Japanese Government. It is presented to individuals who have made distinguished contributions to Japan and is the third most prestigious Japanese decoration after the Order of the Chrysanthemum and the Order of the Paulownia Flowers. The award is administered by the Decoration Bureau of the Office of the Prime Minister and is presented in the name of the emperor. Prior recipients of the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, include actor Clint Eastwood and scholars Carol Gluck, Edwin McClellan, Edward Seidensticker, Earl Miner, and Susan Pharr.
Lee is the director of the Natural Products Research Laboratories at the School. He has discovered several thousand bioactive natural products and their synthetic analogs, providing leads for new generation drug design against AIDS, cancer, and other diseases, including many natural products and analogs currently in clinical trials or preclinical development. He has authored more than 700 research articles and seventy patent applications and has given more than 385 invited lectures and presentations. He is also a member of the editorial advisory board for twenty-four journals.
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