Lecture: «Dynamic Expression of Multivalency»
CiQUS Seminar Room - 12:15h
Ulrich's lab research is directed toward the generation of smart bioactive systems for drug and gene delivery applications. The group is particularly interested in harnessing the power of multivalency in order to achieve effective biomolecular recognition of nucleic acids and its approach rests on the implementation of controlled self-assembly processes for endowing a responsive and adaptive behavior to self-synthesizing chemical systems.
In this talk, Dr. Ulrich will present three examples where we used dynamic covalent chemistry for generating dynamic materials (peptide-based clusters, biopolymers) that express, in a controlled manner, multivalent recognition of nucleic acids. He will show that these systems are adaptive and responsive to physico-chemical stimuli, thereby opening new avenues for the generation of “smart” gene delivery vectors.
About the speaker
Sébastien Ulrich carried out his PhD under the guidance of Pr. Jean-Marie Lehn at ISIS (Strasbourg, France) developing molecular switches for controlling dynamic combinatorial libraries. He subsequently joined the groups of Pr. Harry L. Anderson (Oxford University, UK) as an EPSRC fellow and of Pr. Eric T. Kool (Stanford University, CA, USA) as a Fulbright fellow. In 2011 he was awarded with an ANR Starting grant and joined the group of Pr. Pascal Dumy, first in Grenoble, then at IBMM in Montpellier (France) where he was promoted to a permanent CNRS research position in 2012. He was named Junior Distinguished member of the French Chemical Society in 2014 and was rewarded the bronze medal by the CNRS in 2017.
His current research interests lie at the interface of supramolecular chemistry and bioorganic chemistry, and focus in particular on the design and study of dynamic self-assembled systems and multivalent recognition systems for biological applications such as nucleic acids delivery and enzyme inhibition.