What an amazing achievement for the @LED3hub groups of Hermen Overkleeft and Hans Aerts. The compound nizubaglustat that originated in their lab has made it all the way to clinical phase 3 studies for Niemann-Pick disease and gangliosidoses.

Huge success for the teams of Hermen Overkleeft and Hans Aerts of our LED3 hub. The compound nizubaglustat that originated in their labs for treating Niemann-Pick disease and gangliosidoses advanced to phase 3 studies by Azafaros with €132M in series B funding. https://www.azafaros.com/news/azafaros-secures-132m-in-oversubscribed-series-b-financing-to-advance-phase-3-clinical-programs-of-innovative-therapies-in-lysosomal-storage-disorders/l211c14

Very much looking forward to presenting our work at NextGenChem@NL in Enschede on June 20th.

If you are interested in diverse topics from chemistry, chemical engineering and physics and want to connect with many exciting scientists, consider to register for this event as well!

https://nextgenchem.nl/

We are looking forward to the LED3 Lecture of Ed Tate on May 22nd at 4 p.m. in the Gorlaeus building room CM1.26. He will talk about his research on "Targeting Post-translational Modification for Drug Discovery". If you are interested, come by: https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/science/led3/led3-lectures

Very excited that Ed Tate will visit us for a @LED3hub Lecture on May 22nd and talk about cutting-edge #ChemBio and #chemoproteomics research in the field of #DrugDiscovery. If you are interested, feel free to come by!

#Chemistry

How do you present to a mixed audience? This is a complicated question that, I think, a lot of us struggle with.

Marloes ten Kate gives 3 pointers, how to make communicating to a broad audience more efficient:

- keep the beginning and end simple, so that everyone can follow
- find out, what all people in the audience have in common as a reason to come to your talk
- identify, what you want to achieve with the talk.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marloestenkate_presenteren-voor-een-gemixt-publiek-activity-7323358549042946048-fw1n?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAACVzmDsB7J_8sWXEOBYlnnAs1T4cVcDlrxQ

If you are a PhD or postdoc and want to present at the 5th Virtual @ChemBioTalks, apply for a Flash Talk!

Please share this in your networks, so that we can again get an amazing selection of contributions and exciting Flash Talks!

https://chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/hub/journal/14397633/chembio-flash

Do you want to present your #ChemBio research to a global audience at the 5th Virtual ChemBio Talks?

If you are a #PhD or #postdoc, here is your chance! Apply for a Flash Talk via our abstract challenge. Deadline is June 30th.

#Chemistry

https://chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/hub/journal/14397633/chembio-flash

Interesting ChemRxiv preprint by the group of Kevin Neumann. They describe the Triazine-Thiol Exchange (TriTEx) reaction for the labeling of internal and N-terminal cysteines. Site-selectivity for one of them can be obtained through choosing the right pH. https://chemrxiv.org/engage/chemrxiv/article-details/67fe07e3c51200ce5ba12d76

He closed by stating that one powerful way forward towards finding novel resistance evading treatments is the use of combinations of antibiotics.
Overall, a highly inspiring lecture with a lot of different exciting insights. (9/9)

Regarding the right natural product source, he made the point that nematode gut bacteria are a promissing source as they fight off Gram-negatives and need to make natural products that are not toxic to the host. This led to the discovery of Darobactin targetting BamA. (8/9) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1791-1

In the next part, he talked about the challenge of addressing Gram-negative bacteria, which give an at least 10x lower hit rate than Gram-positives, identifying the bottlenecks of dereplication, mechanism-of-action identification and identifying the right natural product source. (7/9)

Next, he comment on the various Lipid II binding antibiotics (Vancomycin, Teixobactin and Clovibactin) and their different levels of evading resistance development. (6/9) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07530-w

Next, he presented the discovery of clovibactin that binds to the pyrophosphate of Lipid II without detectable resistance. Interesting thoughts on the importance of supermolecular interactions for its activity. (5/9) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009286742300853X?via%3Dihub

Interesting thoughts on compounds without resistance development. Initially, you should be skeptical that you found a new soap, but if you can exclude this, it can be a very interesting compound that probably uses a mechanism-of-action that bacteria cannot overcome. (4/9) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05019-y

He then talked about the iChip technology to isolate bacteria from multiple biological niches and its use in the discovery of teixobactin. (3/9) https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14098

He started by talking about culturing bacteria that cannot be cultured under normal laboratory conditions in order to discover new antibiotic producers. Interesting insights that some unculturable bacteria can be easily cultured together with other "helper" bacteria. (2/9) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1074552110000797?via%3Dihub

We had an amazing Leiden Early Drug Discovery and Development (LED3) hub Lecture by Kim Lewis. He talked about his group's multiple amazing disvoveries of novel natural poducts antibiotics that evade bacterial resistance development. (1/9) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867420302336

We are very happy that Kim Lewis visited us today for a very well attended @LED3hub Lecture. He talked about the prospect of developing "Resistance-evading antibiotics". https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867420302336

The 15th International Activity Based Protein Profiling (ABPP) Meeting will be happening in Leiden in 2027. While it is still a long way to go, if you enjoyed this year's edition or were sad that you missed out, make sure to already follow @ABPP2027 to receive all the information in the future!