2011-11-10

Research Group PhosphoSites

At the Research Group PhosphoSites we study the molecular mechanisms by which phosphorylation triggers protein-protein interactions and conformational changes in proteins. Using this information, we evaluate the possibility to develop small molecular weight compounds to mimic the activation and inhibition of protein kinases.

Research Group PhosphoSites (Frankfurt)

Ricardo M. Biondi (group leader) biondi(at)med.uni-Frankfurt.de	+49 69 6301 4591
Dr. Sonja Neimanis (Post-doc) neimanis(at)med.uni-frankfurt.de	+49 69 6301 87672
Dr. Jörg Schulze (Post-doc) schulze(at)med.uni-frankfurt.de	+49 69 6301 87666
Dr. Jose Arencibia (Post-doc) arencibia(at)med.uni-frankfurt.de	+49 69 6301 87665
Hua Zhang (PhD student) zhang(at)med.uni-frankfurt.de	+49 69 6301 87673
Daniel Pastor-Flores (PhD student) Pastor(at)med.uni-frankfurt.de	+49 69 6301 87665
Angelika Bauer (PhD student) bauer(at)med.uni-frankfurt.de	+49 69 6301 87671
Barbara Hirsch (TA) Hirsch@med.uni-frankfurt.de	+49 69 6301 87669
Evelyn Süß (TA) Suess(at)med.uni-frankfurt.de	+49 69 6301 87670
----------------------------------------- Dr Laura A. Lopez-Garcia Lopez-Garcia(at)med.uni-frankfurt.de	-------------------------- Completed her PhD!
----------------------------------------- Dr. Valerie Hindie Project Leader Hybrigenics Services SAS, Paris vhindie@hybrigenics.com	--------------------------  completed her PhD!
----------------------------------------- Dr. Katrien Busschots busschots(at)med.uni-frankfurt.de	-------------------------- Moved back to Belguim!

The Research Group PhosphoSites is an interdisciplinary research group which currently puts together scientists from different disciplines, including: molecular biology, biochemistry cellular biology, protein crystallography, and synthetic and medicinal chemistry.

We lead the project and perform the molecular biology, biochemistry, crystallography, cellular and animal experiments in our premises at the Internal Medicine Department, Frankfurt University Hospital.

Synthetic and Medicinal Chemistry is performed in our Research Group PhosphoSites lab at the University of Saarland (Saarbrücken), while new projects are with our University of Frankfurt collaborators headed by Prof. Holger Stark.

We published a major breakthrough in Nature Chemical Biology (Hindie et al. Nat.Chem. Biol. 2009 Oct;5(10):758-64). In "Nature" (24th September 2009), Yi Liu writes a News and Views article about the work on allosteric activators ("Caught in the activation" Nature 461, 484-485). More recently we published another breakthrough: allosteric inhibitors to aPKC (Lopez-Garcia et al. Allosteric Regulation of Protein Kinase PKCz by the N-terminal C1 Domain and Small Compounds to the PIF-Pocket, Chemistry & Biology 2011).

We acknowledge past and present support by German associations DFG, Deutsche Krebshilfe, BMBF (BMBF Go-Bio) and LOEWE (Hessen-funded excellence initiative to support the Frankfurt-based research in cancer (Oncogenic Signalling Frankfurt, OSF).

We were also honored by support from the German Diabetes Society -Menarini-Preis - (Projektförderung) der Deutschen Diabetes-Gesellschaft.

We are grateful to Europrofession Foundation (Saarbrücken) for the support (2004-2008) that allowed the establishment and efficient functioning of our Research Group PhosphoSites in Germany.