Abstract
In the spirit of a general interest to translate underrecogized, at best new principles from supramolecular chemistry to address significant challenges from different directions, this lecture will focus first on dynamic covalent exchange cascades to find new ways to enter cells. They presumably account for thiol-mediated uptake (TMU), an intriguing emerging method for drug delivery (proteins, DNA/RNA) and drug discovery (antivirals, cell motility). Of interest also with regard to modern dynamer materials, realized cascade exchangers (CAXs) include chalcogens (strained cyclic disulfides, benzopolysulfanes, thiosulfonates), pnictogens (dynamic phosphorus!) and tetrels (reversible Michael acceptors). Their cellular exchange partners are identified by pattern generation or photocatalytic microenvironment proteomics and used, inter alia, to create dynamic-covalent Golgi trackers. New trackers are welcome in bioimaging, the second main topic of this talk. It will focus on fluorescent flippers. They change color like lobsters, crabs or shrimps during cooking, visualize physical forces in living systems, and are commercially available to enable great science worldwide.
Brief Bio
Stefan Matile is a Full Professor at the University of Geneva, a founding member of the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Chemical Biology and a founding member of the NCCR Molecular Systems Engineering. He is the co-author of more than 380 publications, many in the most respectable society-based journals (67 JACS/Au, etc), and has delivered over 320 lectures all over the world. Educated at the University of Zurich (PhD, with Wolf Woggon) and Columbia University in New York (postdoc, with Koji Nakanishi), he started his independent academic career as an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University, Washington DC, before moving to Geneva.