Design and developement of diagnostics and drugs for neurodegenerative, immunological and microbial diseases

The research aims at two important goals:

1) The development of (fluorescent) tools to visualize biomarkers in neurodegenerative diseases as research tools or diagnostics

In this part of the work fluorescent molecules are developed and optimized. Key goals are to increase the biocompatibility, stability, specificity and (to later enable in vivo imaging applications) a suitably red-shifted fluorescence. Key biomarkers of interest are beta-amyloid and tau protein aggregates (oligomers and late-stage aggregates) as well as transiently expressed reactants leading to advanced glycation end products (e.g. methyl glyoxal).

2) The design synthesis and exploration of potential small-molecule drugs for neurodegenerative and immunological diseases and antimicrobials

Synthetic exploration and elucidation of structure-activity relationship data of congeners with the aim to develop leads for drug targets. A strong emphasis lies on diseases that have an important societal need to be addressed (antimicrobial resistance, certain viruses, cancer immunotherapy adjuvants, etc.).