Working Group Prof. Dr. Meier

Our research portfolio includes projects dedicated to Synthetic Organic Chemistry, Medicinal Chemistry and Chemical Biology. Our main expertise is in the field of nucleoside/nucleotide and oligonucleotide chemistry. Our aim is to answer scientific questions arising from medical needs or biology by applying chemistry methods. The topics we are interested in cover different aspect in Infection Biology and address often the combat of viral diseases. The molecules of interest are always highly polar due to phosphate groups present and these molecules act intracellularly. Therefore, to achieve biological responses these compounds have to be delivered inside cells. We are developing strategies to enable an efficient uptake and intracellular delivery of such molecules.

One branch of our research is dedicated to the development of new antiviral agents based on nucleoside/nucleotide analogues and lipophilic prodrugs thereof or small molecule inhibitors targeting HIV, HCV, Influenza, Herpes viruses and Bunya viruses.
Teaser:

• Lipophilic, bioreversibly masked nucleotides as intracellular acting delivery systems for nucleoside mono- (cycloSal-approach), -di- (DiPPro-approach) or triphosphates (TriPPPro-approach)
• Increasing the potential of nucleoside analogue triphosphate as antiviral agents.
• Small molecule inhibitors to combat new emerging infections
• Stereoselective synthesis of carbocyclic nucleoside analogues
• Post-synthetic labeling of DNA-molecules
• In a second branch we are interested in the Chemical Biology of second messengers like NAADP, ADPR or cAMP and in the development of new imaging methods for DNA/RNA.
• Membrane-permeable derivatives of highly polar adenine comprising second messengers as cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) and adenosine diphosphate ribose (ADPR) SFB1328
• Membrane anchored ATP-specific sensors SFB 132