Design, synthesis and evaluation of carboxylic acids and bioisosters as potent ERAP/IRAP inhibitors

• Scientific Background

Ben moved to the University of Nottingham,UK from China, for a foundation course in 2015. In summer 2016, he passed the exam and enroled at the School of Chemistry as an undergraduate student. He joined an undergraduate research program for drug design and synthesis during 2018-2019, and had a chance to work in the GSK carbon neutral laboratory of the University of Nottingham. At the 2019 summer, he joined the Sir Martyn Poliakoff’s group working on green synthesis of Artemisinin, using super critical CO₂ as main solvent. His master thesis focused on developing a self-optimisation reaction system with online UV-VIS monitoring and HPLC. After he obtained his master degree, Ben moved back to China and worked as a research assistant at the New Material Institute, UNNC.

• CAPSTONE project
  

Carboxylic acids and bioisosters are an important class of bioactive compounds that can be optimized efficiently to target metalloproteases. So far such leads are under exploited for ERAP/IRAP modulation. To fill the gap, Ben will design and synthesize carboxylic acids and bioisosters modulators of ERAP/IRAP, possibly using new chemical modalities, establish structure-activity relationships for efficacy in antigen-presentation assays, stability, bioavailability of compounds for use as probes and lead therapeutic compounds.

• Supervisory team

Prof. Rebecca Deprez-Poulain (ULILLE)

• Contact

ben.he.etu[at]univ-lille.fr

• More on Ben's Project