Bioinorganic Chemistry

and Medicinal Chemistry, Synthetic Chemistry, Analytical Chemistry, Bioanalytics as well as Cell Biology

Responsible: Bernhard Keppler together with Vladimir Arion, Markus Galanski, Christian Hartinger, Michael Jakupec and Peter Unfried

The working group consisting of about 30 diploma and PhD students, is jointly supervised by the scientists mentioned above. Vladimir Arion is mainly responsible for synthesis in the field of ruthenium and osmium, gallium and iron, chalkogensemicarbozonate and paullone derivates as well as the spectroscopically electrochemical characterization and X-Ray analysis. Markus Galanski is responsible for the field of platinum chemistry as well as NMR methods. Jessica Gaetjens is supervising the synthesis of gadolinium compounds and nano particles for MR Imaging. Michael Jakupec focuses on cell- and molecular biological aspects and Christian Hartinger on Bioanalytics and metallorganic synthesis. Peter Unfried deals with the area of rare earth chemistry and the titanium group.

Research Topics

The emphasis is put on the development of novel tumor inhibiting substances, mainly on the basis of metal complexes (metallodrugs), but also as derivatives of naturally occurring compounds as well as the combination of the two areas. These developments start with the synthesis of the active substance, followed by the characterization by means of analytical and bioanalytical methods, investigations of the mode of action, cell biological investigations, followed by cooperations concerning in vivo research and clinical research. Budotitane (KP 102) was the first transitional metal complex after the development of Cisplatin, which has been introduced into the clinical development by this working group.