PhD time
Elli successfully defended her PhD thesis "Unraveling the Secrets of Pathogenic RNA: Biophysical Approaches to Study RNA-Small Molecule Interactions" - congratulations Dr. Kallert! (11/2024)
13th JCF AK Symposium
Looking for a B.Sc., M.Sc. project or research module? We are at the 13th Arbeitskreissymposium of the Jung Chemiker Forum Mainz-Wiesbaden at November 12th and 14th where you can get to know us and our work! In case you cannot make it - check out our poster. (11/2024)
Last performance of the "2024 conference tour"
Now with focus on the computational part of RNA-ligand development, Christian presented at the 18th GDCh German Conference on Chemoinformatics (GCC 2024). After listening to great science and meeting great people coming back with many new computational tools to play with - kudos to all the people developing open software! (11/2024)
Rhein Main RNA
The Kersten lab is now part of the Rhein Main RNA research cluster, a community of universities, research institutes and industry with strong focus on RNA biochemistry and related disciplines. For more information, visit rhein-main-rna.de. (10/2024)
Meet us at DPhG Jahrestagung in Münster
And learn more about the design and development of RNA-binding small molecules. (09/2024)
OncoProTools summerschool & annual meeting
...was in Madrid this year at at CSIC CNB. Many thanks to our hosts Juan & Ana for organizing this great meeting. Last year incoming and all parts start fitting together 🙂 (09/2024)
EFMC-ISMC 2024
Sabrina, Thales and Christian were at the EFMC International Symposium of Medicinal Chemistry in Rome - what an amazing conference full of excellent science and fascinating people! Of course, the young medicinal chemists Thales&Sabrina also attended YMCS. (09/2024)
Maike stays with us!
After a successful M.Sc. thesis (congrats!), Maike will continue wirking in our group, dealing with novel targets and methods of CADD within the MAINCE (Medical AI combining Natural products and CEllular Imaging) project. Good luck & have fun! (07/2024)
Another piece to the puzzle
Different amino acid protomeric and tautomeric states and their changes upon ligand binding are well described in literature (espacially for histidine), but vastly unexplored for RNA nucleobases. In a great collaboration with the Chemical Computing Group (CCG), Montreal (special thanks to Philippe Archambault!) we looked into how local environments can impact protonation and tautomerization of nucleobases and expanded the Protonate3D functionality within MOE for RNA & DNA predictions. For details, have a look at our just published paper at JCIM. (05/2024)
Thales at ACSMEDI-EFMC 24
Thales was at this years ACSMEDI-EFMC in Utrecht presenting his work on CatS-inhibitors and theranostics derived thereof. The poster is available at the OncoProTools website. (04/2024)
Paper time
Our work with the hepatitis C virus internal ribosome entry site (HCV IRES) covering virtual screening and assays to confirm novel ligands is now published in RSC Med. Chem.. It also demonstrates that molecular docking with RNA works, even with such a flexible target that undergoes large conformational changes upon ligand binding. Let's see how far we can go now with our RNA-targeting approach for targets of pharmaceutical and medical relevance - stay tuned! (03/2024)
Welcome, Mareike!
Mareike joins our group for her PhD thesis about the development of graphene-based biosensors for protease detection from biological samples in the EU-HORIZON project MUNASET - Welcome and good luck! (02/2024)
Welcome back, Damian!
After his Erasmus+ stay in our lab last year, Damian has finished his PhD at Opole University - congratulations! He joins us as a PostDoc working on RNA-ligand synthesis and refinement of RNA-ligand docking and MD protocols. Good luck & success! (02/2024)
IQCB opening
The institute for quantitative & computational biosciences (IQCB), where Christian is a member, will have its opening event on January, 23rd, 2024.
RNA PhD conference
Katha, Elli and Laura (from left to right) presented their work on structure-based RNA-ligand design, assay development and molecular recognition at the RNA PhD conference 2023 in Brno. (11/2023)
OncoProTools in a nutshell
What do we actually do in the OncoProTools consortium? An explanation by the project coordinator Prof. Dr. Pieter Van Der Veken: (11/2023)
Full house: We welcome our new interns and undergraduates!
Gideon (M.Sc. thesis BMC) is working on the synthesis of RNA methyltransferase inhibitors. Jenny (B.Sc. thesis BMC) will establish RNase assays and Conrad (B.Sc. thesis BMC) just joined our group for his work on RNA homology modeling for structure-based design. Maike (M. Sc. thesis BMC) will join us on Monday to have a look into details of RNA dynamics and Daniel and Samuel (internships BMC) will realize some (hopefully) RNA-binders and CatS inhibitors, respectively by organic synthesis. (11/2023)
Welcome @all of you, have fun and good luck with your projects!
MUNASET kick-off meeting
Bei MUNASET (Multiparametric nanoelectronic biosensors for therapy response testing) sind wir an der Entwicklung graphenbasierter Biosensoren zur Detektion von Proteaseaktivität aus biologischen Proben zur Diagnose und Therapieverlaufanalyse der Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) beteiligt. Let's get started! (10/2023)
Hattrick: drei Posterpreise für AK Schirmeister/Barthels/Kersten bei der DPhG-Jahrestagung 2023!
Annabelle, Ariane und Sabrina konnten alle einen Posterpreis bei der diesjährigen DPhG-Jahrestagung in Tübingen ergattern. Herzlichen Glückwunsch! (10/2023)
Discovery on Target 2023
Elli, Laura und Christian waren auf der DoT 2023 in Boston - und haben viele tolle Projektideen für RNA-targeting small molecules mitgebracht! (09/2023)
