Institute of Pharmacy and Molecular Biotechnology Pharmaceutical and Medicinal Chemistry
Drugs: Design, Discover, Develop
The group of Christian Klein performs Medicinal Chemistry in an academic setting, but with the intent to discover new therapies: We design small molecules (ligands) that interact with biological macromolecules, such as enzymes or receptors. We synthesize such small molecules and study their biological activity in molecular or phenotypic assays. Isolated enzymes or other "targets" for such assays are generated in recombinant, microbiological expression systems. Furthermore, we develop assay systems that bridge the gap between target-centric assays and phenotypic activity.
News
We won the first prize in a competition of about 80 projects with our work on psychedelic drugs for the treatment of depression and other pychiatric disorders. See the official announcement here. Since the first sketching of our research idea in 2019, we have been working on this topic continuously. The first fragments of our results have now been published as a preprint on ChemRxiv. We will soon report more data on additional compounds and their advantageous properties for novel psychiatric treatments.
Research Topics
We perform Medicinal Chemistry in a variety of therapeutical fields. A traditional focus is on antiinfective, and in particular antiviral drug discovery. Furthermore, we are involved in research and development of novel drugs for psychiatric and cardiovascular diseases and in the area of synthetic immunology.
Whenever appropriate, the group uses structure-based and computational meth- ods to understand and possibly predict the pharmacological or biochemical interactions between small molecules and their biological binding partners. In collaboration with other groups, we determine three-dimensional structures of target-ligand complexes by x-ray crystallography. Furthermore, we solve synthetic problems by developing novel methods in organic chemistry.
Our methods are similar to those used in the Pharmaceutical Industry and we collaborate with companies or research organizations on therapeutical ap- proaches that may lead to new, clinically used drugs. Usually, our focus is on biological targets or medical conditions that are, for whatever reasons, not (yet) adequately addressed by pharmaceutical companies. Our chemical work on biologically relevant compound classes has led to signficant achievements in synthetic methodology.
Information regarding applications
For further information on the application process and required documents, please follow the link.
