Seminar

Chemical Pharmacology of Protein Conjugates and Natural Products

Gonçalo J. L. Bernardes

Our work centers on reaction engineering for site-selective chemical protein modification and its use to provide insight into biology and for the development of protein therapeutics.1 This lecture will cover recent examples of emerging areas in our group in: (i) site-selective chemical modification of proteins at cysteine and lysine, (ii) bioorthogonal labeling of specific protein targets in live cells, (iii) a new method for histidine-metallation of proteins with a [Ru(CO)2]2+ fragment that yields artificial metalloproteins that are able to deliver CO in vivo in a controlled manner, (iv) CO-mediated immunomodulation for cancer therapy, and (v) the exploitation of natural product scaffolds for targeting of calcium channels overexpressed in cancer cells. (1) Krall, N.; da Cruz, F.P.; Boutureira, O.; Bernardes, G.J.L. Nat. Chem. 2016, 8, 103.