Enreca Health > About > Participants > Dept. of Chemistry
Department of Chemistry, University of Southern Denmark
Institutional background
The Department of Chemistry, University of Southern Denmark has as its core disciplines mass spectrometry, molecular modeling, organic chemistry, and spectroscopy. Department of Chemistry is host for Nucleic Acid Center (NAC) which is a Danish research centre of excellence.
Research focus
The vision of this centre is to combine the potential of synthetic organic chemistry and the encoded recognition pattern of nucleic acids in novel and innovative ways to improve a drug therapy. Among the anticipated outputs of this research are novel insights into the structural characteristics of the nucleic acids, introduction of hitherto unknown classes of nucleic acid drugs, development of novel biotechnological tools, and creative innovations within the bio-chip and nanotechnology.
Researcher profiles
Erik Bjerregaard Pedersen (EBP) Ph.D. 1974, Associate Professor, born 1945. He was the prime mover in establishing a M.Sc. curriculum in pharmaceutical chemistry in Odense. He is leading NAC-DRUG which is a Marie Curie early stage training centre for foreign Ph.D. students. EBP has experience from working with developing countries as project administrator (DANIDA-program (Egypt/Denmark) 1992-.
Jesper Wengel (JW) Ph.D. 1991. Professor, born 1963. He is heading the Nucleic Acid Center funded by the Danish National Research Foundation (2001-). JW has experience from working with developing countries as project administrator (DANIDA-program (India/Denmark): 1996-1998. He is currently involved in several EU-funded projects.
Research collaboration
Collaboration with State Serum Institute, Copenhagen on development of new drugs against HIV.
Partner in a European consortium for development of microbicides.
Involvement in capacity development
Development of New Drugs against Hepatitis. This is a Danish ENRECA research capacity building program in Egypt 1992-2005 on drug design The program is supervised in collaboration with State Serum Institute in Copenhagen and includes sandwich training of students from Egypt in Odense and nearly 40 M.Sc. students and nearly 40 Ph.D. students have graduated and they have contributed to more than 90 publications.
Peer reviewed publications
Christensen, U. B.; Pedersen, E. B. Intercalating nucleic acids (INAs) containing insertions of 1-O-(1-pyrenylmethyl)glycerol: Stabilization of dsDNA and discriminating of DNA over RNA. Nucleic Acids Res. 2002, 30, 4918-4925.
El-Brollosy, N. R.; Jørgensen, P. T.; Dahan, B.; Boel, A. M.; Pedersen, E. B.; Nielsen, C. Synthesis of novel N-1 (allyloxymethyl) analogues of MKC-442 (Emivirine) with improved activity against HIV-1 and its mutants. J. Med. Chem. 2002, 45, 5721-5726.
Loksha, Y. M.; El-Badawi, M. A.; El.Barbary, A. A.; Pedersen, E. B.; Nielsen, C. Synthesis of 2-methylsulfanyl-1H-imidazoles as novel non nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs). Arch. Pharmazie 2003, 336, 175-180.
Filichev, V. V.; Pedersen, E. B. Intercalating nucleic acids (INAs)with insertion of N-(pyren-1-ylmethyl)-(3R,4R)-4-(hydroxymethyl)pyrrolidin-3-ol. DNA(RNA) duplex and DNA three-way junction stabilities. Org. Biomol. Chem. 2003, 1, 100-103.
Petersen, Lene; Jessen, Carsten H;. Pedersen, Erik B; Nielsen, Claus. Synthesis and evaluation of new potential HIV-1 non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors. New analogues of MKC-442 containing Michael acceptors in the C-6 position. Org. Biomol. Chem. 2003, 1, 3541-3545.
Michael Petersen, Jesper Wengel. LNA: A versatile tool for therapeutics and genomics. Trends Biotechnol. 2003, 21, 74-81.
Birte Vester, Lars Bo Lundberg, Mads D. Sorensen, B. Ravindra Babu, Stephen Douthwaite, Jesper Wengel. LNAzymes: Incorporation of LNA-Type Monomers into DNAzymes Markedly Increases RNA Cleavage. J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2002, 124, 13682-13683.
Mads D. Sorensen, L. Kværnø, T. Bryld, A. E. Håkansson, B. Verbeure, G. Gaubert, P. Herdewijn, J. Wengel. Alfa-L ribo-Configured locked nucleic acid (alfa-L-LNA): Synthesis and properties. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2002, 124, 2164-2176.
J. Wengel. Synthesis of 3'-C- and 4-C-branched oligodeoxynucleotides and the development of locked nucleic acids (LNA). Acc. Chem. Res. 1999, 32, 301-310.
A. A. Koshkin, S. K. Singh, P. Nielsen, V. K. Rajwanshi, R. Kumar, M. Meldgaard, C. E. Olsen, J. Wengel. LNA (Locked Nucleic Acids): Synthesis of the adenine, cytosine, guanine, 5-methylcytosine, thymine and uracil bicyclonucleoside monomers, oligomerisation, and unprecedented nucleic acid recognition. Tetrahedron, 1998, 54, 3607-3630.
Links
Department of Chemistry, University of Southern Denmark
NAC-DRUG - Nucleic Acid Based Drug Design Training Center
