News / Dates

In autumn 2022, Lars Meerkatz joined us at the IBOC to begin his apprenticeship. During his time with us, Lars was supervised by Marcel Schatton in the synthesis field and by Lisa Böhmer in the enzyme technology field. By gaining an insight into both areas, he was able to take on a very varied range of tasks over time.

Lars has integrated very well into our team and the daily work routine. His positive attitude, his interest in everything new and his constant good humour made him a very pleasant colleague. With his calm manner and willingness…

In her current publication, Diana Amariei describes the successful optimisation of the C-methyltransferase PsmD, which is involved in the biosynthesis of physostigmine, a well-known AChE inhibitor.

Through iterative saturation mutagenesis, she succeeded in enlarging the catalytic centre of PsmD and increasing the enzyme activity towards bulky, non-natural substrates without impairing stereoselectivity. An automated method for expression and screening of the generated enzyme variants (as part of the AutoBioTech-project) enabled the…

We recently welcomed two new colleagues. Annika Höppner (on the left) has already completed her Bachelor's thesis at IBOC and we are delighted that she will now also be doing her Master's thesis with us. Lena Müller (on the right) is starting her doctoral thesis in Thomas Drepper's group and will be working on the BioSC SEED FUND 3.0 project OpTooGlu. We wish both of them a good start and much success for their theses and we are looking forward to our time together.

We were not inactive during the summer break and have two more publications to report.

The first study, a collaboration between Flaminia Mazzone, Moritz Klischan and Julian Greb, is dedicated to the investigation of putative drug candidates for the treatment of toxoplasmosis. To this end, a number of monomeric and dimeric chalcones were investigated. Particularly noteworthy is a bichalcone with phenyl- and methyl-substituted groups, which showed a strong and selective inhibition of parasite growth in the nanomolar range. These results…

This week we had the opportunity to attend a number of thesis defences. On Wednesday, Jacqueline Kühnel, Lia Nitz, Frederike Lore Speh, Zoé Salome Viteri Medina and Moritz Zechlin presented their Bachelor's theses, which they have completed at our institute over the last few months.

Stina Hench successfully defended her Master's thesis today, thus laying important foundations for her doctoral thesis, which she is now starting with us. We look forward to the coming years with you, dear Stina. We are also delighted that Jacky, who completed her…

We are back from the summer break and are starting two of our popular elective modules straight away. From today, we welcome students to the Natural Product Synthesis (NatSy) and Natural Product Biochemistry (NatBC) courses at the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry. While the NatSy module dives deep into the synthesis of natural products, the planning of syntheses and the key concepts of organic chemistry, the NatBC module is dedicated to the isolation and characterisation of natural products. We wish all students an exciting and instructive…

The conference season is in full swing and two of our colleagues have already been on the road attending conferences in recent weeks.

Lea Hoppe attended the BOSS XVIII - 18th Belgian Organic Synthesis Symposium in Liège, which took place from 30 June to 5 July. She presented a poster entitled ‘Flow Synthesis of Physostigmine and Physovenine Precursors’, which was very well received by the other participants. She was particularly impressed by the lecture by Prof. Timothy Noël from the University of Amsterdam, which was a highlight of the…

Congratulations to the winners of the traditional IBOC prediction game at the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry! The top of the table is led by Andreas, followed by Nina, Jörg, Catharina, Mona and Tim. Special thanks go to the organizer Philip Lencer for the successful event. As a prize, the participants received a trophy and delicious cherry jam straight from the Institute's cherry tree. An exciting and successful EM 2024 lies behind us!

Shortly before the summer break, we had the pleasure of taking part in two inspiring events.

On July 2, 2024, the AUFBRUCH graduate cluster kicked off with a festive launch event. The cluster is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as an anchor project with 12.5 million euros. Seven academic institutions and an innovation network around the Rhineland region are involved. The aim of the cluster is to offer young scientists an outstanding, interdisciplinary education, to develop innovative approaches for a sustainable…

From June 4 to 7, the IBOC's annual internal retreat took place in Wermelskirchen. This event was filled with discussion-rich lecture sessions and convivial evenings that further strengthened the sense of community within the institute.

After breakfast, the days began with exciting presentations focusing on doctoral students' publication strategies and the Institute's comprehensive range of methods. These presentations provided valuable insights and new impulses for the scientific work of the entire team. The discussions following the…