Arne Jørgen Aasen

Arne Jørgen Aasen (born 15 October 1939) is a Norwegian chemist and professor emeritus at the University of Oslo, School of Pharmacy. Aasen received his engineering degree in biochemistry and organic chemistry in 1964, and a doctorate (dr. ing.)[1][2] in organic chemistry[3] in August 1966 from The Norwegian Institute of Technology, Trondheim (renamed Norwegian University of Science and Technology in 1996). In 1972 he defended his thesis for a doctorate (tekn. dr.) at The Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.[4]

In 1972 Aasen was appointed as unpaid associate professor ("oavlönad dosent") in organic chemistry at Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Three years later Aasen was employed as a doesn't in general and pharmaceutical organic chemistry at the School of Pharmacy in the University of Oslo, where except for two periods, he was a member of the staff until his retirement in 2007.[5]

In 1979 Aasen became a professor in organic chemistry at the University of Tromsø, Department of Chemistry,[6] and in 1983 professor in chemistry at the Norwegian College of Agriculture (the Norwegian University of Life Sciences after 1995), Institute of Chemistry, Ås.[7] He was an employee at the University of Tromsø and the Norwegian College of Agriculture for two and five years, respectively.

Aasen was contacted in 2017 by associated professor Aman Dekebo who suggested collaboration re structural elucidations, structure-activity studies of compounds from the resin of Commophora africana which is used in traditional medicine. The results were published in 2020 [8]

o the University of Oslo School of Pharmacy in 1988 as professor in his previous field.[9] Arne Jørgen Aasen was appointed professor II in natural products chemistry at the University of Tromsø, School of Pharmacy from 1996 to 2007.[10][11]

Aasen has held a number of research positions abroad. He was a research scientist with Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Melbourne, Australia,[12] postdoctoral fellow and research associate in professor Ralph T. Holman's group at The Hormel Institute, University of Minnesota, Austin, Minnesota, USA.[13] Professor Ralph T. Holman published the first paper describing the well known omega-3 nomenclature in 1964.[14] Aasen was appointed research scientist at the Research Department of Swedish Tobacco Co., Stockholm, Sweden.[15] He has also been visiting professor at ARCO (Atlantic Richfield Company) Plant Cell Research Institute, Dublin, California, USA.[16] and at Nycomed Salutar Inc., Sunnyvale, California, USA.[17]

Aasen's research areas include determination of the absolute configurations of racemic drugs,[18][19][20][21] isolation, structural determination and syntheses of natural products, e.g. carotenoids[22] and pyrrolizidine alkaloids,[23] mass spectrometry of specifically deuterium-labelled wax esters, fatty acids and triglycerides,[24][25] and identification and syntheses of flavour constituents from tobacco[26] and other plants.[27]

Aasen was from 1979 to 1981 responsible for the establishment of a section for organic chemistry at University of Tromsø. During the period 1989 to 2002 Aasen was head of the Department of Medicinal Chemistry, School of Pharmacy, University of Oslo.

Aasen has participated in about twenty lawsuits dealing with drugs and patent infringements either as an expert co-judge of Borgarting Court of Appeal,[28] the District Courts of Asker and Bærum,[29] Follo, and Oslo, or an expert for one of the parties in Norway and in New York, USA. He has since 2000 been consultant for the Norwegian registries of drugs used in human[30] and veterinary[31] medicine.

Academic distinctions

References

  1. ^ Arkitekter og sivilingeniører. Licentiatgraden tildelt 1965 – 1966. Booklet published by the Secretariat, NTH, pp. 54 – 55 (in Norwegian)
  2. ^ The degree lic. techn. was replaced by dr. ing. in 1975. Hemmer P. C. and Svare I., Linjen for Teknisk fysikk ved NTH og dens videreføring. 75 år, 1932 - 2007, page 35 (in Norwegian)
  3. ^ Aasen, A. J., Chemical Studies on Carotenoids of Microorganisms, Thesis, NTH, Trondheim, pp. 1 - 35
  4. ^ Aasen, A. J., Chemical Studies on some Naturally Occurring Isoprenoid Compounds, Thesis, KTH, Stockholm, May 1972, pp. 1 - 32
  5. ^ Appointed as dosent at the University of Oslo in the cabinet meeting July 11, 1975. Aftenposten Aften, July 12, 1975, page 2 (in Norwegian; ex Aftenposten´s archives)
  6. ^ Arne Jørgen Aasen, 70 years. Aftenposten Kultur, October 15, 2009, page 13 (in Norwegian; ex Aftenposten´s archives)
  7. ^ Appointed as professor at the Norwegian College of Agriculture in the cabinet meeting October 8, 1982. Aftenposten, October 9, 1982, page 18 (in Norwegian; ex Aftenposten´s archives)
  8. ^ Worku Dinku (Ethiopia), Johan Isaksson (Sverige), Fredrik Garnås Rylandsholm (Norge), Petr Bouř (Czech Republic), Eva Brichtová (Czech Republic), Sang Un Choi (Republic of South Korea), Sang-Ho Lee (Republic of South Korea), Young-Sik Jung (Republic of South Korea), Zae Sung No (Ethiopia), John Sigurd Mjøen Svendsen (UiT), Arne Jørgen Aasen (UiT og UiO), and Dr. Aman Dekebo, corresponding author and leader of the project. Anti-proliferative activity of a novel tricyclic triterpenoid acid from Commiphora africana resin against four human cancer cell lines Applied Biological Chemistry 63, Article number: 16 (2020) https://doi.org/10.1186/s13765-020-00499-w
  9. ^ Appointed as professor at the University of Oslo in the cabinet meeting July 24, 1987. Aftenposten, July 25, 1987, page 15 (in Norwegian; ex Aftenposten´s archives)
  10. ^ Aasen, A. J., Alm, T., Anderssen, T., Stensen, W. and Svendsen, J. S. M., Planter og innholdsstoffer (Plants and Plant Constituents), Ottar, no. 220 (1998), pp. 49 – 55. Ottar is a popular science periodical published by Tromsø University Museum, Tromsø (in Norwegian)
  11. ^ Arne Jørgen Aasen, 70 years. Aftenposten Kultur, October 15, 2009, page 13 (in Norwegian; ex Aftenposten´s archives)
  12. ^ Aasen, A. J. and Culvenor, C. C. J., The Saturated Pyrrolizidinediols. II. The Total Synthesis and Stereochemistry of Macronecine. Journal of Organic Chemistry 34 (1969), pp. 4143 - 4147.
  13. ^ Baumann, W. J., Aasen, A. J., Kramer, J. K. G. and Holman, R. T., Evidence for the Electron Impact Induced Formation of Prominent Cyclic Acetal Ions from Aliphatic Ester Lipids. Journal of Organic Chemistry 38 (1973), pp. 3767 - 3771.
  14. ^ Holman R. T., Nutritional and metabolic interrelationships between fatty acids. Federation Proceedings 23 (1964), pp. 1062–1067.
  15. ^ Aasen, A. J., Kimland, B. and Enzell, C. R., Tobacco Chemistry 18. Absolute Configuration of (9R)-9-Hydroxy-4,7E-megastigmadien-3-one (3-Oxo-α-ionol). Acta Chemica Scandinavica 27 (1973), pp. 2107 - 2114
  16. ^ Tal, B., Goldsby, G., Burke, B. A., Aasen, A. J. and Robeson, D. J., Studies on the Mechanism of Polyketide-derived Biosynthesis of Deoxyradicinin and Related Metabolites of Alternaria helianthi. Journal of the Chemical Society. Perkin Trans. I (1988), pp. 1283 - 1287
  17. ^ Aasen, A. J., Groth, P., Carvalho, J. F., Varadarajan, J. and Klaveness, J., Synthesis and Crystal Structure of a Macrotricyclic Chelating Agent. Acta Chemica Scandinavica 49 (1995), pp. 133 - 137
  18. ^ Cf. list of publications in Cristin
  19. ^ Stinson, S. C., Counting on Chiral Drugs. Chemical & Engineering News 76(38) (Sept. 21, 1998), pp. 83 - 104
  20. ^ Stinson, S. C., Enantiomeric Drugs. Chemical & Engineering News, 75(22) (June 2, 1997), pp. 28 - 30
  21. ^ Stinson, S. C., Chiral Pharmaceuticals. Chemical & Engineering News 79(40) (Oct. 01, 2001) pp. 79 - 97
  22. ^ Carotenoids, Isler, O., editor. Birkhäuser Verlag Basel und Stuttgart, (1971), pp. 1 - 932
  23. ^ Bull, L. B., Culvenor, C. C. J. and Dick, A. T., The Pyrrolizidine Alkaloids, Frontiers of Biology 9 (1968), pp. 1 - 293
  24. ^ Streitwieser, A., Heathcock, C. H. and Kosower, E. M., Introduction To Organic Chemistry. Fourth edition, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, USA, (1992), pp. 544 - 553
  25. ^ McMurry, J., Organic Chemistry With Biological Applications. Second edition, Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning, Belmont, CA, USA, (2011), pp. 937 - 940
  26. ^ Enzell, C. R., Wahlberg, I. and Aasen, A. J., Isoprenoids and Alkaloids of Tobacco. Progress in the Chemistry of Organic Natural Products 34 (1977), pp. 1 - 79
  27. ^ Cf. list of publications in Cristin
  28. ^ Co-judge Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine in Borgarting Court of Appeal (in Norwegian)
  29. ^ "Co-judge in the District Court of Asker and Bærum (in Norwegian)" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-09-20. Retrieved 2016-09-02.
  30. ^ Stated in the introduction of Felleskatalogen over Farmasøytiske Spesialpreparater markedsført i Norge e.g. in the 2009-edition
  31. ^ Stated in the introduction of Felleskatalogen over Farmasøytiske Preparater markedsført i Norge til bruk i veterinærmedisinen e.g. in the 2014 - 2015-edition
  32. ^ "Gruppe III Kjemi". DKNVS (in Norwegian Bokmål). Retrieved 2024-01-16.
  33. ^ Invitasjonssbrev
  34. ^ Stated in the introduction of Bulletin of the Chemical Society of Ethiopia 23(3) (2009), p. 2.