Dr. David E. Cane This is Me

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1. 1. www.eurekalert.org

   www.eurekalert.org/pub_release - [Cached]

   Published on: 7/16/2008   Last Visited: 7/21/2008

   In the new study, David E. Cane and Chieh-Mei Wang point out that these two substances, geosmin and methylisoborneol, are volatile organic substances produced by certain soil bacteria.
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   David E. Cane, Ph.D. Brown University Phone: 401-863-3588 Email: David Cane@brown.edu

2. 2. John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation C Fellows Page

   jsg.gf.org/cfellow.html - [Cached]

   Published on: 12/11/2007   Last Visited: 6/20/2008

   David E. Cane, Vernon K. Krieble Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Biochemistry, Brown University: 1989. Mitzy Canessa-Fischer, Deceased.Biochemistry-Molecular Biology: 1959, 1961.Appointed as Canessa Ossandon, Mitzy.

3. 3. Providence researcher receives national award

   sunsite1.dc.stanford.org/relea - [Cached]

   Published on: 1/17/2002   Last Visited: 10/12/2002

   Chemist David E. Cane of Providence, R.I., will be honored on August 22 by the world's largest scientific society for research into how nature makes complicated molecules useful to medicine.He will receive the 2000 Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society at its 220th national meeting in Washington, D.C.
   
   "What I'm particularly interested in is how nature does organic chemistry -- how it makes these complex structures from relatively simple building blocks," said Cane, a bioorganic chemist at Brown University.
   
   One compound his group studies is erythromycin, a commonly prescribed antibiotic originally made by soil bacteria to fend off competitors.Cane's insights are helping medical researchers develop more effective versions of the drug.
   
   "We've identified the building blocks, the way they're put together, and the enzymes responsible for carrying out those chemical reactions," he summarized.
   
   To study the enzymes -- the body's skilled construction workers ‹ Cane focuses on their genes, the blueprints for their construction.Once one understands how an enzyme is put together, one begins to learn how it works, he said.That knowledge leads to the ability to modify the blueprint, and test theories about function.
   
   "Changing the structure of the enzyme also means that, in consequence, we're making new materials," he said."So this approach gives medicinal chemists the tools to go back and manipulate genes to improve drugs like erythromycin."
   
   Other interests for Cane, who holds the Vernon K. Krieble chemistry chair at Brown, include terpenes (molecular building blocks that are also the flavor in herbs) and the origin of vitamin B6.
   
   Cane said he remembers always being interested in science, with the "usual interest in dinosaurs and in how things worked."But he ultimately ended up in biosynthesis because "it's a kind of chemical puzzle-solving," he explained.
   
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   The ACS Board of Directors established the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award in 1984 to recognize and encourage excellence in organic chemistry.Cope was a celebrated chemist and former chairman of ACS.The award consists of $5,000, a certificate and a $40,000 unrestricted research grant.