[Frontier Leaders] Chemical Synthesis of Very Large Molecules

Frontier Leaders Seminar

Title: Chemical Synthesis of Very Large Molecules

Speaker: Jeffrey Bode

Affiliation: ETH Zurich

Abstract:

Organic synthesis allows us to constructed molecules with precise control of connectivity and stereochemistry. This incredible power has radically transformed medicine, agriculture, electronics, textiles and food science. Our ability – as chemists – to construct molecules larger than a few hundred atoms, however, remains incredibly limited in comparison to the achievement of biological systems.
 
By considering the two fundamental barriers to the synthesis of larger molecules – chemoselectivity and reaction rate – our group is challenging the synthesis of very large molecules by developing novel organic reactions. We have devised a new, chemoselective amide-forming ligation that allows access to synthetic proteins, including unnatural variants. By developing faster variants of these reactions, we are making advances in the chemical synthesis of protein–protein conjugates, sequence controlled polymers, and novel biomaterials.

Bio: Jeffrey Bode  studied Chemistry (B.S., 1996) and Philosophy (B.A., 1996) at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. He studied at the California Institute of Technology and ETH Zürich, where he received his Dok. Nat. Sci. in 2001. From 2001–2003, he was a JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. In 2003, he joined the University of California, Santa Barbara as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and in 2007 moved to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia as an Associate Professor. In 2010, he returned to ETH Zürich as Professor of Synthetic Organic Chemistry.  He has served Chair of the Editorial Board for Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry and is currently co-Editor-in-Chief of Helvetica Chimica Acta and Executive Editor for the Encyclopedia of Reagents for Organic Synthesis. Since 2013, he is also Principle Investigator and Visiting Professor at the Institute of Transformative Biomolecules (ITbM) at Nagoya University in Japan.