ERC Starting Grant for Junior Professor Mario Wiesenfeldt
Photo: R. Baege
The chemist Dr Mario P. Wiesenfeldt, who was previously employed at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, moved to the University of Wuppertal as a junior professor on 1 September and is setting up a research group in the school of mathematics and natural sciences as part of his ERC Starting Grant. His "orthocat" project aims to develop a new method that will be used primarily in medicinal chemistry in the future.
Drugs often consist of very complex chemical compounds. In order to produce them in a targeted manner, catalysts are needed - they act like tools that enable and accelerate chemical reactions.
These catalysts often consist of rare metals. However, these are becoming increasingly scarce on earth. In addition, certain active ingredients can easily slow down the metallic catalysts, and it is time-consuming to remove the sometimes toxic metal residues from the drug at the end. This costs time, money and generates a lot of waste.
The "orthocat" project is therefore looking for an alternative: catalysts that work entirely without metals. To ensure that these so-called organocatalysts work as efficiently as their metallic counterparts, Wiesenfeldt uses visible light as an energy source. He makes sure that the conditions are mild, for example by avoiding high temperatures.
"The big challenge is selectivity. Most drug candidates have several possible reaction sites. Without targeted control, the reaction could start at the wrong site - and unusable by-products would result. In the project, we solve this by having the catalyst form a light-absorbing mini-compound, a so-called EDA complex, with only a very specific part of the molecule. This means that only this desired site reacts, the rest remains unaffected," explains Wiesenfeldt.
ERC Starting Grant
The target group of ERC Starting Grants are excellent young researchers at the beginning of an independent career: researchers of all nationalities with two to seven years of professional experience since completing their doctorate, a promising scientific career and an outstanding research project can apply. ERC Starting Grant calls are open to all topics and disciplines. Applications are assessed solely on the basis of scientific excellence.
