Overview
Prior to joining Spruson & Ferguson (Asia), Natsuho worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, USA where she was involved with a project on cobalt complexes that selectively inhibit proteins that contain histidine residues in the active site. These proteins included zinc finger transcription factors, matrix metalloproteinases and metallo-ß-lactamases, and Natsuho worked on both synthesis of such conjugates as well as their biological testing.
Natsuho graduated with first class honours with a Bachelor of Science (Advanced) for medicinal bioinorganic chemistry from the University of Sydney, Australia. She then pursued her postgraduate education at the University of Sydney and Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, where she worked on prodrugs that are activated by unique features of the tumour microenvironment. She was awarded a PhD for her thesis on the development and testing of cobalt-complexes that release their ligands in hypoxic environments as well as peptides that enter cells only in the presence of tumour-specific enzymes.
Natsuho is also the first Japanese national to be registered as a Singapore patent attorney.