New methods for modifying drugs with electricity
A new PhD project at KTH will investigate electrosynthetic modification of PROTAC drugs. The project has been granted funding from the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF) and will be carried out in collaboration with AstraZeneca.
“It feels great to establish even stronger ties to the pharmaceutical industry and thereby increase the chance for our academic basic research to become useful in industry-relevant applications,” says Helena Lundberg , Associate Professor in Organic Chemistry.
The doctoral student will develop new methods for modifying drug candidates using electricity instead of chemical reagents. The goal is to enable new chemical transformations with minimized waste.
“The ambition is that the project will result in an expansion of the chemical toolbox with new sustainable methods for chemical synthesis of relevance for the pharmaceutical application,” Lundberg says.
Proteolysis targeting chimeras, PROTAC, is a new class of biologically active compounds that act through a different mechanism compared to classical drugs and thus have the potential to have therapeutic effect also on previously difficult-to-treat diseases.
There will be an open call for the position and the doctoral student will share the time between AstraZeneca in Mölndal and KTH.
Text: Jon Lindhe