Tesheng Chang was born at Tainan city of Taiwan in 1972, and graduated as a bachelor degree in department of Life Science, National Tsing-Hua University, Taiwan, 1991-1995; master degree in department of Life Science, National Tsing-Hua University, 1995-1997; and PhD degree in department of Chemical Engineering, National Tsing-Hua University, 1999-2003. Dr. Chang’s major field is enzymatic biotransformation of natural products.

He worked as an assistant professor at Chia Nan University of Pharmacy & Science, 2003-2004; an assistant professor at National University of Tainan, 2004-2007; an associate professor at National University of Tainan, 2007-2010; a professor at National University of Tainan, after 2010; a chairman of department of Biological Sciences and Technology at National University of Tainan, 2011-2017. 

Prof. Chang won several awards, including Awards of Excellent Researcher, 2010-2013 (the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan); Awards of Excellent Researcher, 2013-2016 (the Ministry of Education of Taiwan); Awards of Outstanding Researcher, 2017 and 2023 (the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan); Awards of Excellent Researcher, 2018-2022 (the Science and Technology Council of Taiwan). 

Recently, Prof. Chang was selected in the list of the World’s Top 2% of Scientists (released by Stanford University) at both "Lifelong Science Influence Rankings” and “Annual Science Impact Rankings” during 2020 to 2022. Prof. Chang achieved a sabbatical research grant from the Science and Technology Council of Taiwan to visit Prof. Kuniyoshi Shimizu’s Lab at Kyushu University of Japan during 2022.07 to 2023.01.

The fundamental step in developing new drugs is finding new compounds. In addition to synthetic and natural sources, biotransformation is an alternative route for obtaining new compounds. Xenobiotics can be biotransformed into new compounds via microorganisms or enzymes. Based on the numerous bioactivities of triterpenoids, several scientists have focused on studying biotransformations of natural products to find new bioactive triterpenoids.

Natural product biotransformation, especially concerning new bioactive molecules, involves a fundamental yet time-consuming trial-and-error process. In our prior research, we devised a predicted data mining approach (PDMA) aimed at efficiently identifying new compounds through known enzymes and chemicals. By selecting an enzyme, PDMA finds biotransformable candidates from commercially available natural compounds. Moreover, the novelty of the anticipated products from the presumed biotransformation can be evaluated based on the data mining of known chemical databanks. Previous PDMA study demonstrated that the hydroxylation of natural flavonoids using Bacillus megaterium tyrosinase (BmTYR), Bacillus glycosyltransferase (BsUGT), or Streptomyces O-methyltransferase (SpOMT) as a biocatalyst can successfully produce new bioactive compounds from selected precursors. Thus, the PDMA concept could be applied to other biotransformation enzymes such as glycosyltransferase (GT), glycoside hydrolase (GH), O-methyltransferase (OMT) with known chemical structure modifications.