In January 2, 2018, PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) published online a paper entitled “The prodrug of 7,8-dihydroxyflavone development and therapeutic efficacy for treating Alzheimer’s disease”, which is a cooperative research achievement of Dr. Ye Keqiang, a tenured professor of Emory University, and a BEFS research team led by Prof. Zhang Ying. The research synthesized the prodrug R13 through a specific chemical modification of the active site of 7, 8-dihydroxyflavone, in order to improve the oral bioavailability and the brain exposure level, and elucidated the molecular mechanism of its treatment of Alzheimer disease.

The paper’s first author is Zhang Chun, a Ph.D student of Prof. Zhang Ying; the corresponding author is Prof. Ye Keqiang of Emory University. This is the first time that BEFS has ever published a research paper on PNAS.