Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry Blog

We are delighted to welcome our new Associate Editor, Professor Jeroen Dickschat to the Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry Editorial Board!

Jeroen S. Dickschat studied Chemistry at TU Braunschweig and obtained his PhD under the supervision of Stefan Schulz in 2004, followed by postdoctoral stays with Rolf Müller at Saarland University and with Peter Leadlay at the University of Cambridge (UK). In 2008 he started his independent career at TU Braunschweig, culminating in his habilitation in 2013. In 2014 he accepted an appointment as a Professor of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Bonn. He also holds a honorary Professorship at the NIOO Wageningen (The Netherlands).

His group is interested in the biosynthesis of microbial natural products, with a special focus on the elucidation of the complex reaction mechanisms in their formation.

Find out more about Jeroen on his website and submit your article to him today!

We are delighted to welcome our new Associate Editor, Professor Huan Wang to the Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry Editorial Board!

Professor Wang graduated from Peking University (2005). He obtained his PhD from University of Maryland at College Park (2010), and conducted post-doctoral research work at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2010-2014). Wang started at Nanjing University in 2014 and works as a Professor in the Chemistry department.

His research group aims to address problems at the interface of chemistry and biochemistry, including the chemical synthesis and biosynthesis of bioactive peptides, peptide/protein functionalisation and biological functions of non-coding RNAs.

Find out more about Huan on his website and submit your article to him today!

We are delighted to welcome our new Associate Editor, Dr Cristina Trujillo to the Organic & Biomolecular Editorial Board!

Dr Cristina Trujillo is a Lecturer in Computational & Theoretical Chemistry at The University of Manchester. She has expertise in highly fundamental topics within Computational Organic Chemistry such as asymmetric catalysis, computationally-led catalysis design, mechanisms of reaction, and non-covalent interactions. Her research interests are focused on the asymmetric catalysis field with particular emphasis on the application of computational techniques in the design of organocatalysts along with the prediction and control of catalytic processes with a direct impact on the development of products with different applications.

Cristina obtained her Ph.D. in Theoretical and Computational Chemistry in 2008 at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain). During the period 2008-2016, she held several Postdoctoral positions in Spain (CSIC), Prague (Academy of Sciences), and Ireland (Trinity College Dublin). From 2016 until 2018 she worked at TCD as a Research Fellow before becoming an Assistant Lecturer at TU-Dublin in the School of Chemical & Pharmaceutical Sciences. She has been awarded the very competitive SFI-Starting Investigator Research Grant (SIRG, 2018) and L’Oreal-Unesco Women in Science UK and Ireland Fellowship -Highly Commended (2019). She started as an independent researcher leading her own group at TCD from 2019-2022 before moving to the University of Manchester.

Find out more about Cristina on her website and submit your article to her today!

We are delighted to announce that Dr S.S.V Ramasastry has joined the OBC Editorial Board!

About Ramasastry:

Dr Ramasastry obtained his Ph.D. in Chemical Sciences in 2005 from the Department of Organic Chemistry, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (India), under the supervision of Prof. A. Srikrishna. He then pursued postdoctoral studies with Prof. Carlos F. Barbas, III at The Scripps Research Institute, San Diego (USA). After briefly working in industry, he became Assistant Professor in 2011 and then Associate Professor in 2017 at the Department of Chemical Sciences, IISER Mohali.

His research interests include the development of sustainable and atom economic reactions via organophosphine catalysis, palladium-catalyzed allylic alkylation reactions, one-pot cascade transformations employing sulfur ylides, and applying these strategies in the synthesis of bioactive natural products and pharmaceutically important compounds.

Find out more about Ramasastry on his webpage and check out some of his OBC publications below.

Phosphine- and water-promoted pentannulative aldol reaction
Bishnupada Satpathi, Lona Dutta and S. S. V. Ramasastry
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2019, 17, 1547-1551

A computational investigation of the solvent-dependent enantioselective intramolecular Morita–Baylis–Hillman reaction of enones
Nitin Kumar Singh, Bishnupada Satpathi, P. Balanarayan and S. S. V. Ramasastry
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2017, 15, 10212-10220

One-pot relay catalysis: divergent synthesis of furo[3,4-b]indoles and cyclopenta[b]indoles from 3-(2-aminophenyl)-1,4-enynols
Manisha, Seema Dhiman, Jopaul Mathew and S. S. V. Ramasastry
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2016, 14, 5563-5568

Di- and triheteroarylalkanes via self-condensation and intramolecular Friedel–Crafts type reaction of heteroaryl alcohols
Seema Dhiman and S. S. V. Ramasastry
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2013, 11, 8030-8035

Taming furfuryl cations for the synthesis of privileged structures and novel scaffolds
Seema Dhiman and S. S. V. Ramasastry
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2013, 11, 4299-4303

Find out more about our full Editorial Board on our webpage.

Please join us in welcoming Professor Kate Jolliffe as new Associate Editor of Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry from 1st of September 2020 !

New Associate Editor Prof. Kate Jolliffe

Katrina (Kate) Jolliffe received her BSc (Hons) in 1993 and PhD in 1997 from the University of New South Wales. She held positions at Twente University, The Netherlands; the University of Nottingham, UK and the Australian National University before taking up an Australian Research Council QEII fellowship at The University of Sydney in 2002. In 2007 she became a Senior lecturer at the same institution and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2008 and to full Professor in 2009. She currently holds the position of Payne-Scott Professor at The University of Sydney. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and has been awarded the Beckwith (2004), Biota (2006), Birch (2017) and H. G. Smith (2018) medals of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute. Her research interests are in the areas of supramolecular, peptide and organic chemistry, with a focus on the design and synthesis of functional molecules, such as molecular sensors capable of detecting anions in biological environments or cyclic peptides for application in biology and medicine.

Kate’s publications with Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry:

Molecular recognition and sensing of dicarboxylates and dicarboxylic acids
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2020, Advance Article

Efficient use of the Dmab protecting group: applications for the solid-phase synthesis of N-linked glycopeptides
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2009,7, 2255-2258

Tailoring the properties of a hypoxia-responsive 1,8-naphthalimide for imaging applications
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2018,16, 619-624

Synthesis of a family of cyclic peptide-based anion receptors
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2011,9, 3471-3483

Effect of the amino acid composition of cyclic peptides on their self-assembly in lipid bilayers
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2015,13, 2464-2473

Selective recognition of sulfate ions by tripodal cyclic peptides functionalised with (thio)urea binding sites
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2012,10, 2664-2672

Selective sensing of pyrophosphate in physiological media using zinc(II)dipicolylamino-functionalised peptides
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2015,13, 7822-7829

Synthesis of full length and truncated microcin B17 analogues as DNA gyrase poisons
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2014,12, 1570-1578

Synthesis of N-linked glycopeptides via solid-phase aspartylation
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2010,8, 3723-3733

Synthetic peptides with selective affinity for apoptotic cells
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2006,4, 1966-1976

Total synthesis of (±)-rhazinal, an alkaloidal spindle toxin from Kopsia teoi
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2003,1, 296-305

New OBC Associate Editor Elizabeth Krenske

We are delighted to welcome Dr Elizabeth Krenske to the OBC team as an Associate Editor. Elizabeth is an Associate Professor at the University of Queensland, Australia, where her research focuses on the computational study of organic reactions and modelling of drug molecules and interactions.

After starting out her career in chemistry as an undergraduate at the University of Queensland, Elizabeth undertook a PhD in the field of synthetic main-group chemistry at The Australian National University’s Research School of Chemistry, under the supervision of Professor S. Bruce Wild. She spent a further two years carrying out postdoctoral research at the Australian National University, before receiving a Fulbright Scholarship and commencing postdoctoral studies at UCLA with Ken Houk. Elizabeth returned to Australia in 2009 as an Australian Research Council (ARC) Australian Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Melbourne, and moved to The University of Queensland in 2012 as an ARC Future Fellow. She is currently an Associate Professor and Strategic Research Fellow in the University of Queensland School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences. To find out more about Elizabeth and her research, visit her webpage or browse some of her recent publications below.

Elizabeth’s recent publications:

The fate of copper catalysts in atom transfer radical chemistry

Polym. Chem., 2019, 10, 1460-1470

Asymmetric synthesis of multiple quaternary stereocentre-containing cyclopentyls by oxazolidinone-promoted Nazarov cyclizations

Chem. Sci., 2018, 9, 4644-4649

Synthesis of spirocyclic orthoesters by ‘anomalous’ rhodium(II)-catalysed intramolecular C–H insertions

Org. Biomol. Chem., 2018, 16, 256-261

Claisen rearrangements of benzyl vinyl ethers: theoretical investigation of mechanism, substituent effects, and regioselectivity

Org. Biomol. Chem., 2017, 15, 7887-7893

An unprecedented stereoselective base-induced trimerization of an α-bromovinylsulfone

Org. Biomol. Chem., 2017, 15, 5529-5534

Submit your research to Elizabeth now!

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Prof. Anthony Davis as the new Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry Editorial Board Chair. Tony returns to the Board after serving for many years as an Editorial Board member and we are very pleased to welcome him to his new role as Chair.

Tony is a Professor of Supramolecular Chemistry at the University of Bristol, with research focusing on anion recognition and transport, carbohydrate recognition, and crystal engineering. He started his chemistry career at Oxford University, obtaining both his undergraduate degree and D.Phil (in the group of Dr Gordon Whitham), followed by two years of postdoctoral work under the supervision of Prof. Jack Baldwin. He joined the group of Prof. Albert Eschenmoser in 1981, working as a Royal Society European Exchange Fellow, before becoming a Lecturer in Organic Chemistry at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1982. In September 2000, he moved to his current institution, and you can find out more about his current group on the research group webpage.

Tony is also a co-founder of Ziylo, a biotechnology company focusing on the development of new treatments for diabetes patients, which was recently sold to Novo Nordisk. A second company spun out of Ziylo, Carbometrics, continues to work on carbohydrate sensing.

Prof. Davis is the recipient of numerous awards including the Tilden Medal and the RSC Award for Physical Organic Chemistry. He has published hundreds of articles, and you can see a selection of his great work below.

Upon becoming Chair, Tony commented, “OBC is a cornerstone of organic chemical publishing, and I’m delighted to take on this responsibility.”

Read some of Tony’s latest publications:

Maltodextrin recognition by a macrocyclic synthetic lectin

Chem. Commun., 2018, 54, 8649-8652

Anion transport by ortho-phenylene bis-ureas across cell and vesicle membranes

Org. Biomol. Chem., 2018, 16, 1083-1087

(Included in the 2018 OBC HOT article collection)

Enantioselective carbohydrate recognition by synthetic lectins in water

Chem. Sci., 2017, 8, 4056-4061

Synthesis and evaluation of a desymmetrised synthetic lectin: an approach to carbohydrate receptors with improved versatility

Org. Biomol. Chem., 2016, 14, 1930-1933

(Included in the 2016 OBC HOT article collection)

OBC is delighted to welcome our new Associate Editor, Professor Santanu Mukherjee, to the Editorial Board.

Santanu started his career in chemistry at R. K. Mission Residential College, Narendrapur, India, obtaining his BSc in 2000. He went on to study for his MSc in chemistry at IIT, Kanpur, 2002, before joining Professor Albrecht Berkessel at Universität zu Köln for his doctoral studies. After completing these in 2006, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Professor Benjamin List at Max-Planck Institut für Kohlenforschung in Mülheim an der Ruhr until 2008 and with Professor E. J. Corey at Harvard University from 2008-2010. In 2010, Santanu returned to India to join the Department of Organic Chemistry at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2015.

His research interests focus on asymmetric catalysis, with a particular emphasis on the discovery of new enantioselective transformations, and recently, on iridium-catalyzed asymmetric allylic substitution reactions. To find out more about his research interests, you can visit the group webpage.

Santanu is a recipient of numerous recognitions and awards, and has published a large number of papers in high quality journals. Below are just a few examples of these publications:

Iridium-catalyzed enantioselective direct vinylogous allylic alkylation of coumarins

Chem. Sci., 2018, 9, 5767-5772,  Edge Article

“On water” catalytic enantioselective sulfenylation of deconjugated butyrolactams

Org. Biomol. Chem., 2017, 15, 6921-6925,  Paper

Nitro-enabled catalytic enantioselective formal umpolung alkenylation of β-ketoesters

Chem. Sci., 2017, 8, 6686-6690,  Edge Article

Catalytic enantioselective cascade Michael/cyclization reaction of 3-isothiocyanato oxindoles with exocyclic α,β-unsaturated ketones en route to 3,2′-pyrrolidinyl bispirooxindoles

Org. Biomol. Chem., 2016, 14, 10175-10179,  Communication

Submit a manuscript for Santanu to handle today

We are delighted to introduce Assistant Professor Corinna S. Schindler as the newest member of our Editorial Board.

Originally from Schwaebisch Hall, Germany, Corinna carried out her undergraduate studies at the Technical University of Munich, completing her Diploma Thesis under the supervision of K. C. Nicolaou at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla. She then joined the Carreira group at ETH Zurich for her Ph.D., before accepting a postdoctoral position with Eric N. Jacobsen at Harvard University. In 2013 she moved to her current faculty as an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan.

Over the course of her career, Corinna has worked in various areas of organometallic and organic synthetic chemistry. Currently, her research lab in Michigan focuses primarily on developing new synthetic methodologies to access biologically active structures, and you can find out more by visiting the group webpage.

Corinna has been recognized by numerous awards including the NSF Career Award, c&en’s Talented Twelve Award, the American Chemical Society Green Chemistry Institute GreenX: Rising Star Award and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship.

Read her publications, including:

Synthesis and biological evaluation of pharbinilic acid and derivatives as NF-κB pathway inhibitors

Chem. Commun., 2015, 51, 8990-8993, DOI: 10.1039/C5CC02918J

Photoredox activation and anion binding catalysis in the dual catalytic enantioselective synthesis of β-amino esters

Chem. Sci., 2014, 5, 112-116, DOI: 10.1039/C3SC52265B