The Meienhofer Award was established in 2007 to recognize an individual with a lifetime of achievement in peptide science. The biennial award is named after Johannes Meienhofer, in honor of his transformative discoveries in solid phase peptide synthesis. Notably, Meienhofer's work demonstrated the power of medicinal chemistry in peptide pharmacology and is considered to have laid the foundation of modern synthetic peptide therapeutics.
Stephen B. H. Kent, recipient of the 2022 Meienhofer Award, received his first two university degrees in his native New Zealand and his Ph.D. (Organic Chemistry) from University of California, Berkeley. Following postdoctoral work with Bruce Merrifield, Professor Kent held faculty appointments at the Rockefeller University, the California Institute of Technology, and The Scripps Research Institute. He was Founder of Gryphon Sciences and served as its Chief Scientific Officer from 1997-2000. In 2001, he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago, where since June 2021 he is Professor Emeritus of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
Over the past several decades, Stephen Kent has profoundly shaped the field of peptide and protein chemistry. His many and diverse contributions have altered the way scientists tackle the study of these macromolecules. He pioneered the total chemical synthesis of protein molecules and showed it to be a practical and versatile method for the production of large quantities of high purity material for detailed mechanistic and structural investigations. In particular, the Kent chemical ligation concept together with the native chemical ligation reaction made proteins and enzymes accessible to direct chemical investigation via convergent, chemoselective assembly of unprotected synthetic peptide segments.
Since its introduction in 1994, native chemical ligation has become robust, reliable, and widely used. Efficient total chemical synthesis of a wide range of protein molecules, including the enzymes HIV-1 protease and human lysozyme, the protein hormone human insulin, glycoprotein mimetics of erythropoietin, together with numerous mirror image protein molecules for his pioneering studies of racemic protein crystallography, highlight the practical utility of such approaches. As these examples attest, Stephen Kent has had a gift, throughout his career, for developing new chemistries and for utilizing them to reveal the molecular basis of protein function.
His exceptional achievements in scientific research have previously been recognized by the receipt of major distinctions, including the ACS Hirschmann Award in Peptide Chemistry (1994), the Protein Society E.T. Kaiser Award (2002), the Vincent du Vigneaud (2004) and R. Bruce Merrifield (2009) Awards of the American Peptide Society, the European Peptide Society Rudinger Medal (2010), the Japanese Peptide Society Akabori Medal (2010), the ACS Alfred Bader Award in Bioorganic Chemistry (2011), the Lorne Symposium Leach Medal (2013), the ETH Prelog Medal (2017), and the inaugural Scoffone Award of the Italian Peptide Society (2018).
Dr. Kent will receive his award Tuesday, November 8th during the Boulder Peptide Symposium. Register today!
More information on the Meienhofer Award, including a list of previous recipients, and the Boulder Peptide Symposium can be found online at www.boulderpeptide.org/meienhofer-award.