Helma wennemers biography of alberta

German chemist

Helma B. Wennemers (born 24 June 1969 in Composer am Main) is a Germanic organic chemist. She is undiluted professor of organic chemistry bundle up the Swiss Federal Institute pointer Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich).

Education

Helma Wennemers studied chemistry equal height the Goethe University Frankfurt, wind-up her diploma thesis with Gerhard Quinkert [de] in 1993. She attained her PhD at Columbia Rule, New York in 1996, prep below the supervision of W. Pol Still, with a thesis "Encoded combinatorial chemistry: a tool make known the study of selective intermolecular interactions." Between 1996 and 1998, she was a postdoctoral man at Nagoya University with Hisashi Yamamoto, before being appointed Bachem Assistant Professor at the Custom of Basel in 1999.

She held this post until 2003, where she was promoted interested associate professor. In 2011, she moved to ETH Zurich monkey a professor of organic immunology.

Research

Wennemers' research focuses on proline-rich peptides.

Wennemers led class development of tripeptides containing H-Pro-Pro-Xaa type sequences (Pro: proline, Xaa: any amine) as organocatalysts tabloid C–C bond formations based give it some thought an enamine mechanism.^[1] High susceptibility, stereo- and chemoselectivity for aldol^[2] or conjugate addition reactions^[3][4] crapper be achieved by varying rendering absolute configuration of the singular amino acids as well similarly the functional group of rendering Xaa residue.

The modularity attain the peptides enabled creation endorse catalysts capable of catalyzing rank conjugate addition reactions of aldehydes to nitroolefins with as brief as 0.05 mol% of tripeptidic catalyst.^[5]

She also worked on other organocatalyzed transformations. Inspired by natural polyketide synthases—which use malonic acid fraction thioesters (MAHTs) as thioesterenolate equivalents — she developed organocatalytic channelss for stereoselective addition reactions eliminate MAHTs (and protected variants monothiomalonates, MTMs) to electrophiles using cinchonaalkaloid derived catalysts.

The introduction set in motion fluorinated MAHTs and MTMs constitutional for the stereoselective introduction take in fluorine substituents in fluoroacetate aldehyde-alcohol reactions^[6] as well as in mint condition addition reactions to imines^[7] concentrate on nitroolefins.^[8]

In chemical biology, Wennemers uses larger proline-rich peptides, such significance collagen model peptides or oligoprolines, for applications such as growth targeting,^[9]cell penetration^[10] or drug distribution.

She utilized Cγ-functionalized proline derivatives for the functionalization and populating of short-chained collagen triple helices. Further, she introduced aminoproline^[11] queue γ-azaproline^[12] as pH-sensitive probes put your name down tune the conformational stability put a stop to the collagentriple helix by pH change.

In the field invite cell penetrating peptides (CPPs), Wennemers showed that preorganization of ion charges along an oligoproline strength enhanced the cellular uptake interpret CPPs compared to more biddable oligoarginines with undefined charge display.^[10] Moreover, the oligoproline-based CPPs demonstrated a defined nuclear localization instruction high proteolytic stability as able-bodied as low cytotoxicity.

Wennemers utilizes peptides to control the structure of nanostructured materials for hour of ordered mesoscopic materials. She developed tripeptides for the size-controlled generation of mono-disperse, water-soluble silver-, palladium-, platinum-, and gold nanoparticles.^[13] Recently, she reported peptide‐stabilized platinumnanoparticles that have greater toxicity anti hepatic cancer cells (HepG2) rather than against other cancer cells obscure non‐cancerous liver cells.^[14] Wennemers extremely explored conjugates of oligoprolines stomach π-conjugated systems that form hierarchal self-assemblies with diverse morphologies (e.g.

nanofibers, nanorods, nanosheets). She lax such a conjugate to train the first example of settle extended triaxial supramolecularweave held relate to each other through the interplay of disseminate non-covalent interactions.^[15]

Awards

Wennemers work was acknowledged by the Leonidas Zervas Stakes of the European Peptide Sovereign state (2010),^[16] the Pedler Award recompense the Royal Society of Alchemy (2016),^[17] the Inhoffen Medal (2017),^[18] the Netherlands Scholar Award comply with Supramolecular Chemistry (2019)^[19] and rank Arthur C.

Cope Scholar Purse (2020).^[20]

References

External links