Professor Yuyang Dong was awarded a Lilly Research Award! The award provides scientists who are working on basic and applied research projects with an avenue to partner with global external researchers to collaboratively advance research projects. These research projects range in focus and may include development of new models, methods, or techniques, validation of disease targets and/or biomarkers, or approaches to improve existing preclinical models.

Dong’s project establishes the first general asymmetric Chan–Lam C(sp³)–P coupling platform, enabling streamlined, stereodefined access to phosphonates that underpin drug discovery and oligonucleotide therapeutics. By uniting organoboron modularity with a mild Cu-catalyzed radical-relay mechanism, the method allows programmable installation of neutral, stereogenic phosphonate backbones that improve nuclease stability, tune conformation, enhance potency, and mitigate off-target effects. The resulting P(V) building blocks will directly advance Lilly’s development of next-generation oligonucleotide modalities and address key bottlenecks in their therapeutic pipeline. Overall, this work provides a transformative synthetic gateway to innovative oligonucleotide architectures.