About us

The Organic and Biomimetic Chemistry Research (OBCR) Group is specialized in the design and synthesis of modified peptides and nucleic acids and methods for their conjugation and labeling.

Building expertise in this area for more than 20 years, within OBCR we now try to contribute to tackling the major challenge of targeted delivery of next-generation therapeutic biologicals where successful biorthogonal conjugation chemistries are prerequisite for the success of such therapeutic strategies.

In parallel, we exploit the developed technologies for applications in advanced biomarker detection. We use tools such as singlet oxygen (or ROS species on cellular level) and red light activation of photosensitizers to achieve selective precision ligations between and/or to biomolecules.

Major research interests:

• The construction of conformationally defined peptide architectures. Scaffold decoration, cyclisation and peptide stapling are used to impose a particular conformation and stability on the parent peptides. The synthesized compounds can find applications as peptide vaccins, peptide hydrogels, protein mimetics, DNA-binding ligands and artificial receptors or synthetic antibodies.
• The development of new 'click' methods for biorthogonal crosslinking and labeling of biomacromolecules such as peptides, proteins and oligonucleotides. More specifically the OBCR group has developed a versatile furan-oxidation based methodology for the site-selective labeling or introduction of covalent bonds between two binding partners.
• The design of novel reactive peptide and oligonucleotide based probes, including peptide nucleic acids, for applications in antisense and antigene strategies, protein and miRNA/lncRNA target identification and receptor pulldown.