1. Department of Chemistry Seminar Announcement Date/Time/VenueTitle/Speaker 10 Feb (Thu) 11am – 12nn @ S8 Level 3 Executive Classroom Automated Carbohydrate Synthesis Professor Peter H Seeberger Max-Planck Institute for Colloids and Surfaces & Free University of Berlin, Germany Host : Assoc Prof Tan Choon Hong About the Speaker All are Welcome Professor Peter H. Seeberger received his Vordiplom in 1989 from the Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. In 1995 he earned his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the Sloan- Kettering Institute for Cancer Research in New York, he became Assistant Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in January 1998 and was promoted to Firmenich Associate Professor of Chemistry in 2002. From June 2003 until January 2009, he held the position of Professor for Organic Chemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. In 2009, he assumed position as Director at the Max-Planck Institute for Colloids and Surfaces in Abstract Potsdam and Professor at the Free University of Berlin. He serves as an Affiliate Professor at the Sanford-Burnham Institute in La Jolla, CA. Prof Seeberger was awarded the Tetrahedron Young Investigator Award 2010 for Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry. Carbohydrates on the surface of cells are involved in a host of fundamental biological processes. 1 While peptides and oligonucleotides are now readily accessible using automated solid phase synthesis, access to complex carbohydrates has been very difficult and time consuming. Described is the development of a fully integrated platform based on automated oligosacharide synthesis 2,3,4 and carbohydrate arrays to address biological problems. Particular emphasis will be placed on the latest verison of the automated synthesis platform that is currently being made available to laboratories around the world. Bioinformatics studies have revealed that a relatively small number of building blocks is required to synthesize a large portion of the occupied glycospace. 5,6 Automated oligosaccharide synthesis relies on access to usable quantities of monosaccharide building blocks. In order to shorten synthetic routes, we have designed de novo methods using purely chemical 4 as well as enzymatic means. 7 The synthesis of glycosaminoglycans, a highly complex class of carbohydrates that includes heparin, is even more complex as it requires the sulfation at particular positions. For that purpose a new strategy and a new instrument had to be designed that now yields glycosaminoglycan oligosaccharides in days rather than months. 8 1. Seeberger, P.H.; Nature 2005, 437, 1239. 2. Plante, O.J.; Palmacci, E.R.; Seeberger, P.H.; Science 2001, 291, 1523. 3. Seeberger, P.H.; Werz, D.B.; Nature 2007, 446, 1046 4. Seeberger, P.H.; Kröck, L.; Esposito, D.; Wang, C.-C.; Bindschädler, P.; Castagner, B.; submitted. 5. Werz, D.B.; Ranzinger, R.; Herget, S.; Adibekian, A.; von der Lieth, C.-W.; Seeberger, P.H.; ACS Chem. Biol., 2007, 2, 685 6. Adibekian, A.; Stallforth, P.; Hecht, L.-M.; Werz, D.B.; Gagneux, P.; Seeberger, P.H.; Chem. Sci., 2010, 1, in press. 7. Timmer, M.S.M.; Adibekian, A.; Seeberger, P.H. Angew. Chem.Int. Ed. 2005, 44, 7605. 6. Gillingham, D.G.; Stallforth, P.; Adibekian, A.; Seeberger, P.H.; Hilvert, D.; Nature Chemistry, 2010, 2, 102. 8. Eller, S.; Jin, Y.; Hahm; Collot, M.; Klein, J.C. in preparation