Ass.-Prof. Dr. Christian Kowol, Institut für Anorganische Chemie
Strategies to improve (metal-based) anticancer drugs
Severe side effects of chemotherapeutics but also of modern targeted therapeutics (tyrosine kinase inhibitors, TKIs) are still a main problem in the treatment of cancer. However, for the development of a new anticancer agent, “only” an improved tolerability is usually not sufficient. Consequently, a higher efficacy combined with tumor-specific activity is a main goal in the design of future cancer therapeutics. Furthermore, although there is currently a worldwide hype about immunotherapy, the most recent clinical studies revealed that a combination of (platinum-based) chemotherapy with checkpoint inhibitors is superior to immunotherapy alone. Such a combination is currently approved for first line therapy of lung cancer and a combination with a TKI for renal cancer.
Strategies to improve efficacy and reduce side effects are diverse and we used several approaches in the last years including drug targeting (peptides, proteins), prodrug systems (reductive, hypoxic or enzymatic activation) and nanoparticles (liposomes).
In this talk a few examples on such strategies will be presented, including passive targeting and drug delivery systems for anticancer thiosemicarbazones and albumin-binding Pt(IV) complexes with an outstanding antitumor activity in vivo.
Christian Kowol: u:find
Dr. Katharina Pallitsch, Institut für Organische Chemie:
From 11C to 18F – Organic Chemistry as Potent Tool in Medicinal Chemistry
Visualizing biochemical processes in living systems on a molecular level is one of the biggest challenges of modern life sciences. A profound understanding of metabolic pathways and protein expression levels in different tissues is necessary to understand how alterations in metabolic processes and expression levels are involved in pathological conditions. In vivo imaging of these processes is thus crucial for early stage diagnosis of severe pathologies such as cancer and neuroinflammatory diseases including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson´s disease.
Together with the Medical University of Vienna we develop new low molecular compounds that can be used to image expression levels of proteins or metabolic alterations in carbohydrate metabolism. After labelling the designed precursor compounds with short-lived radioisotopes such as 11C or 18F they can be used for positron emission tomography (PET) imaging, which is the most sensitive and specific technique for this purpose.
Katharina Pallitsch: u:find
Ass.-Prof. Dr. Marc Pignitter, Institut für Physiologische Chemie:
Oxidized lipids in our daily diet – Controlling their formation and understanding their health effects
Oxidation of dietary lipids causes deteriorative changes in chemical, sensory and nutritional food properties. Vegetable oils, for instance, are rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids and considered healthy, although these dietary fats are prone to oxidation. The limited shelf life of these products is determined by their low oxidative stability, which can be characterized by accumulation of various lipid oxidation products that contribute of characteristic off-flavors and are supposed to have detrimental health effects. Since the addition of antioxidants to vegetable oils and other foods rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids is largely limited by legal regulations, costs and consumer acceptance, novel approaches are needed to improve the oxidative stability of dietary lipids. We seek to (i) identify novel lipid oxidation products that are more suitable as indicators of lipid oxidation, (ii) modify manufacturing processes to improve the oxidative stability of vegetable oils, and (iii) characterize ADME processes and biological effects of lipid oxidation products in biological systems to reduce their putatively harmful effects on health. This approach is currently applied in an FFG grant in which cold-pressed oils with prolonged shelf life will be developed by stimulating carbonyl-amine reactions, decreasing oxygen availability and enhancing the extraction yield of natural antioxidants. First, cold-pressed vegetable oils were characterized for their oxidized lipids by LC-MS/MS. The identified oxidized triacylglycerols were, then, evaluated for various biological effects. In these studies, structure-specific effects of oxidized triacylglycerols from differently oxidized oils on the phospholipid composition of gastric cells were demonstrated, indicating oxidized triacylglycerols as a gating factors for dietary fat absorption.
Marc Pignitter: u:find
Programm: https://chemie.univie.ac.at/en/news-events/talks-events/faculty-colloquium-series/
Fakultätskolloquium SoSe 2019 (PDF)
Bei einem nachgewiesenen Besuch von mindestens drei der vier Vorträge erhalten Studierende 0,5 ECTS für diese Lehrveranstaltung (LV 270178 SE Fakultätskolloquium).
