Phillip O. Crews

Phillip Crews (born August 15, 1943) is an African American chemist at UCSC. His research work is around marine natural products chemistry and diversity education in chemistry. He was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2008.

Early life Crews was born in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois and lived in Chicago until the family moved to Palo Alto in the 1950s. Crews then wrote and was awarded an NSF postdoctoral fellowship to investigate the stereochemistry of organo-metalloids at Princeton University with the late Kurt Mislow.

Research In 1970, Crews obtained a position in the chemistry department at UCSC, where he began his research career investigating physical organic chemistry. as an untenured assistant professor.

Crews uses bioassay-guided isolation to discover natural products that may help treat or cure human diseases, incorporating elements of structure elucidation and employing state-of-the-art nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques. He became especially interested in the molecular structures of the psymberins and the bengamides, molecules isolated from Indo-Pacific sponges. Psymberin is one of his most important discoveries because of its potential for further development to treat solid tumor cancers. The mixed NRPS-PKS biosynthetic product comes from the marine sponge Psammocinia aff. Bulbosa. Crews research on psymberin has stimulated almost 100 studies and publications by other laboratories. Another molecule of importance is bengamide B, that led to an anti-cancer Phase I clinical trial on a close analog. the Mitochondrial Complex I inhibitor, mycothiazole, the human methionine aminopeptidase inhibitor, and fascaplysins, an opioid receptor agonist. He is also a holder of a patent for oxazole anthelmintic agents of marine origin. Crews led and co-authored of the widely-used textbook, “Organic Structure Analysis”., along with Marcel Jaspars and Jaime Rodriguez. The first edition was published by Oxford University Press in 1998 and with the second edition being published in 2009. Crews' goal was to highlight the intense complexity of spectroscopic analysis of natural products, from which the “Crews rule” emerged. The “Crews rule” states that if a molecule’s ratio of hydrogens to carbons is less than 1, then additional measures should be performed to confirm the structure. a position he held for 20 years. including running the NIH-supported ACCESS program for the past 27 years. This program helps first-generation and under-represented students from 2-year community colleges transition to 4-year university by giving them access to cutting edge research and building their confidence to continue in careers in science. His dedication to diversity and inclusion was recognized with UCSC's 2004 Excellence through Diversity Award. He also gave the UCSC Spring 2019 Emeriti Lecture on “Inspirational Biomolecules from Oceania.” In 2021, the UCSC chemistry department established the Phillip Crews symposium, "Powered by Chemistry, Strengthened by Diversity" and student fellowship.

Winery In Crews’ early days in academia, Crews wanted to add a new dimension to chemical education at UCSC by contributing to the general education curriculum. He therefore launched of a new course, “Chemistry of wine - Introductory lecture-laboratory course for non-chemistry students” as well as other lectures such as Wines & winemaking Merging Chemistry Fundamentals and Sensory Evaluation Outcomes to Gain a 21st Century Perspective at Cabrillo College. with his wife Peggy (BW CA-W-3444) in 1997.

Awards and honors 1990 National Cooperative Drug Discovery Group (NCDDG) award 2008 Norman R Farnsworth American Society of Pharmacognosy Research Achievement Award 2008 Chair, Gordon Research Conference-Marine Natural Products, Ventura Beach, CA 2008 Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 2009 Outstanding Faculty Award for the UC Santa Cruz Division of Physical and Biological Sciences 2012 American Society of Pharmacognosy Fellow 2014 American Society of Pharmacognosy President & Vice President 2015 Edward A. Dickson Endowed Professorship award 2017 Special Issue of Journal Natural Products in Honor of Professor Phil Crews