Nature Chemical Biology—a series of the top international academic journal Nature, has published online Impeding the interaction between Nur77 and p38 reduces LPS-induced inflammation on March 30^th. This paper is cooperated by laboratories of Professor Wu Qiao and Professor Lin Tianwei from School of Life Sciences. The research findings reveal a new approach—signaling pathway p38-NF-κB for orphan nuclear receptor Nur77 in controlling inflammatory reaction, which provides new targets and theoretical foundation for selecting new anti-inflammatory medicines.

Prof. Wu Qiao’s research group has been publishing a series of research papers on Nature Chemical Biology in recent years and this is the fourth one. Besides, this paper is also an original achievement in cooperation with research groups in various subjects, including structural biology, chemical biology and natural pharmaceutical research. These research findings fully reflect the advantage of interdisciplinary study and represent the trends of relevant research. The research group comprehensively and systematically describes the great biological function of Nur77 as an important clinical target to control different diseases, enriching and developing theories of orphan nuclear receptor. Furthermore, they have found small molecular compounds to lower blood glucose level, inhibit melanoma growth and resist inflammatory reaction, providing significant lead compounds for curing diseases concerned. The serial researches have been funded by several NSFC key projects and “973” project of MOST successively.

Li Li, Liu Yuan and Li Fengwei from School of Life Sciences are the co-first authors and Prof. Wu Qiao and Prof. Lin Tianwei are the corresponding authors.