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Christian Brückner
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(b. 1963)
Postdoctorate, University of California at Berkeley,
USA, 1996-1998
Ph.D., University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada,
1996
Dipl.Chem. (= M.Sc.), Institute of Technology, Aachen,
Germany, 1991
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Research Interests:
Synthetic Bioinorganic and Coordination Chemistry;
Chemistry of Pyrroles and Porphyrins; Supramolecular
Chemistry
Development of Carbohydrate-Based Metal Chelators
of Pharmacological Interest
Metal complexes have found increasing
use in medicine. Their applications range from well
known areas such as cancer (Pt) and arthritis (Au) therapies
to uses in non-invasive diagnostic (99mTc) and therapeutic
nuclear medicine (e.g. 67Cu- ,186 and 188Re). Generally,
a metal cannot be used as a drug without having it cloaked
with an organic molecule. However, only few metal complexes
of medicinal interest have advanced beyond the experimental
stage.
It is our goal to develop a family of
C-glycoside (a class of sugars) based metal chelators
which confer the ideal pharmacodynamic profile on metals
of medicinal interest. |
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The Chemistry of Porphyrins:
Porphyrins (1) play key roles in energy fixation and
in a multitude of metabolic processes. This, their optical
and electronic properties, pleasing structure, and utility
in many technical applications, are reason for their
continued study. In particular a cancer therapy which
employs the combination of a chlorin (a b-hydroporphyrin)and
light to destroy diseased cells, known as photodynamic
therapy (PDT), has received great attention in past
years.
Our research addresses the (metal-coordination
modulated) reactivity of porphyrin ß,ß'-bonds
with the aim of making better drugs for PDT. |
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The Development of
Squaric Acid-Based Molecular Sensors:
Supramolecular chemistry is "the
chemistry beyond the molecule, the designed chemistry
of the intermolecular (non-covalent) binding interactions".
Supramolecular chemistry also aspires to become a general
‘science of informed matter’. This refers
to the possibility of storing and relaying information
via receptor-substrate pairs. For instance, if a receptor
binds selectively a substrate, and this binding changes
the spectroscopic properties of the receptor, then one
has created a sensor, indicating the presence of the
substrate. It is our goal to develop such a sensor based
on metal-ligand interactions using the squaric acid
molecule as scaffold for the binding functionalities.
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