Rate My Professor Longqin Hu

Longqin Hu is Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicinal Chemistry in the Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. He earned a BSc in Pharmacy in 1984 and an MS in Medicinal Chemistry in 1987 from the Second Military Medical University in Shanghai, China, a PhD in Medicinal Chemistry in 1993 from the University of Kansas, and completed an NIH postdoctoral fellowship in Biochemistry from 1994 to 1996 at the University of Delaware. Hu began his independent career as Assistant Professor at the University of Oklahoma in 1996 before joining Rutgers University in 1999, where he rose through the ranks to full Professor and later became Department Chair. He directed the Graduate Program in Medicinal Chemistry from 2012 to 2022 and has been a member of the Cancer Institute of New Jersey since 2001. His research has received funding from the National Institutes of Health, American Cancer Society, Department of Defense Medical Research Programs, State of New Jersey Commission on Cancer Research, and Pardee Foundation.

Hu's research centers on synthetic medicinal chemistry and bioorganic chemistry, encompassing the design of anticancer prodrugs for site-specific activation in tumor tissues, particularly for prostate cancer; small molecule inhibitors of protein-protein interactions including Keap1-Nrf2 and PD-1/PD-L1; and crystallization inhibitors for kidney stone diseases such as cystinuria, hyperoxaluria, and hyperuricosuria. Key developments include L-cystine diamides LH707 and LH708, orally bioavailable inhibitors of L-cystine crystallization that demonstrated efficacy in a cystinuria mouse model and were licensed to PharmaKrysto for further development. Hu serves as Editor-in-Chief of Medicinal Chemistry Research since 2020, following his tenure as Associate Editor-in-Chief of Acta Pharmaceutica Sinica B from 2011 to 2019, and is a member of the Long Range Planning Committee of the American Chemical Society Division of Medicinal Chemistry. He co-edited the book Drug Delivery: Principles and Applications, Second Edition (John Wiley & Sons, 2016), contributed chapters on prodrug design, and holds multiple patents, such as US 11,628,221 B2 (2023) on peptide-linked prodrugs activated by prostate-specific antigen and US 11,420,949 B2 (2022) on cystine diamide analogs for cystinuria. Recent publications include '8-L-Cystinyl bis(1,8-diazaspiro[4.5]decane) as an orally bioavailable L-cystine crystallization inhibitor for cystinuria' (ACS Med. Chem. Lett., 2024) and 'Structure-activity relationships and pharmacokinetic evaluation of L-cystine diamides as L-cystine crystallization inhibitors for cystinuria' (Med. Chem. Res., 2024).