News
15.05.2013
Congratulations to Anna and Philipp who are the recipients of one of the SCNAT/SCS Chemistry Travel Awards. Anna and Philipp will be able to attend the 12th International Symposium on Applied Bioinorganic Chemistry in Guangzhou (China), where they will present their latest results.
04.05.2013
Congratulations to the running team of the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry "ACI Metal Rocks" who finished 133rd of out 900 teams at the SOLA relay run. Special congratulations to Jeannine, Philipp and Gilles who were part of the team! Let's see if this will incite more members of the Gasser group to run next year Coquin Below are a few pics taken at the after party!
03.05.2013
Congratulations to Sandro who successfully defended his Master Thesis! Well done, thanks for your hard work and good luck for your new job in the US!
27.04.2013
Congratulations to Saonli and Malay for tying the knot! All the best for your future together! Below is a pic taken by our local reporter Tanmaya Cool!
22.04.2013
Congratulations to Philipp who has just won the Bruker Travel Award from the Graduate School of Chemical and Molecular Sciences of the University of Zurich. Philipp will be able to attend the 12th International Symposium on Applied Bioinorganic Chemistry in Guangzhou (China), where he will present his work recently published in Angew. Chem. Int. Ed.
14.04.2013
Our recent J. Am. Chem. Soc. paper (Pierroz et al. 2012, 134, 20376-20387) has been recently highlighted in Chimia and Chemistry in Australia! Congratulations once again to Vanessa, Tanmaya, Anna and Cristina.
18.03.2013
A warm welcome to our new post-doc Riccardo Rubbiani who has just joined our group today endowed with a Novartis fellowship. Riccardo recently finished his PhD thesis at the Technical University Braunschweig (Germany) in the group of Prof. Ingo Ottt. Here in Zurich, Riccardo will work on the preparation of organometallic-based drug candidates. Good luck!
04.03.2013
Congratulations to Anna, Tanmaya, David, Angelo, Johanna, Sandro and Malay for their paper which has been just accepted in Organometallics. It is nice to mention that David, Angelo, Johanna and Sandro were undergraduate students at the time of this work has been submitted.
In this work, we present, to the best of our knowledge, the most efficient synthesis of aminoferrocene ever reported. Furthermore, we have extended the scope of this discovery to another small organometallic synthon, namely aminoruthenocene. This work led to a patent application (EP13157319.8).
18.02.2013
Welcome to our new Master student Angelo Frei! Good luck and, as we say in the group, make it happen!
15.02.2013
Congratulations to Tanmaya and Malay for their paper which has been just accepted in Artifical DNA: PNA & XNA, a new journal specialised on artificial oligonucleotides.
In this work, we present the preparation of the first heterobimetallic PNA in solution phase.
05.02.2013
Congratulations to Philipp for his paper which has just been accepted in Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. This article is the result of a terrific collaboration with the groups of Prof. Udo Bach and Dr. Alison M. Funston at Monash University (Melbourne, Australia). A BIG thank-you to them as well as to Thibaut and Yuanhui.
In this paper, the preparation of stable peptide nucleic acid-modified gold nanoparticle as well as their self-assembly on gold surfaces is described for the first time.
See the pictures of the following party here.
04.12.2012
Congratulations to Malay and Vanessa for their paper which has just been accepted in Chem. Eur. J. This article would not have been possible without the precious help of Katrin Ingram, Bernhard Spingler, Stefano Ferrari, Robin B. Gasser and Jennifer Keiser. A BIG thank-you to them!
27.11.2012
Congratulations to Vanessa, Tanmaya, Anna and Cristina for their paper which has been just accepted by J. Am. Chem. Soc. A HUGE thank-you is going to our collaboratorive partners Julia Schür, Ingo Ott, Leone Spiccia and Stefano Ferrari for their invaluable help towards this work on the preparation and the in-depth investigation of the biological effects of an inert Ru(II) anticancer drug candidate. See the pictures of the following party here.
09.10.2012
Congratulations to Vanessa whose poster has been ranked to the third position at the Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin Symposium. Great achievement! Cake to follow Coquin
24.09.2012
Malay and Vanessa's paper entitled "Ferrocenyl Derivatives of the Anthelmintic Praziquantel: Design, Synthesis and Biological Evaluation" has been just accepted by J. Med. Chem. Congratulations! A big thanks to Katrin Ingram and Jennifer Keiser from the Tropical Institute in Basel for their enormous help towards the elucidation of the anthelmintic activity of the ferrocenyl derivatives, to Bernhard Spingler for the X-ray structure determination and to Stefano Ferrari for his help for the cellular biology section of this manuscript.
29.08.2012
Have a look at your new group picture here! A lot of new faces have recently joined the group.
15.08.2012
A warm welcome back to our new post-doc Tanmaya Joshi who has just joined the group today. Tanmaya recently finished his PhD thesis at Monash University (Australia) but knows the group well as he spent three months in our laboratories during his thesis as part of a collaboration with his former boss, Prof. Leone Spiccia. Here in Zurich, Tanmaya will work on the specific delivery of metal-based drug candidates to cancer cells. Good luck!
26.07.2012
The course "Medicinal Inorganic Chemistry" (CHE 625) will be given again during the Fall Semester. The first lecture will be held on the 24th of September in the room 34-F-48.
03.07.2012
A warm welcome to our new vacation student Angelo who has joined the group today. Angelo will work on the preparation of novel organometallic-containing biomolecules. Good luck!
12.06.2012
Congratulations to Cristina and Michelle (a previous internship student) for their New. J. Chem. paper. In this article, the preparation and in-depth characterisation of novel ferrocenyl ligands and of their metal complexes is reported.
23.05.2012
Congratulations to Malay for his review on the opportunity that organometallic compounds offer for the chemical biology field of research which is now available as an ASAP article in ChemBioChem. Great work Malay!
07.05.2012
Last week, the group made an excursion in the Swiss mountains. After a nice 6h-hike, the group has been "rewarded" with a bbq and a few cold drinks! The pictures of the walk can be seen here!
15.03.2012
Congratulations to Tanmaya for his publication in the new journal of the RSC "RSC Adv.". This paper reports the uptake and interactions of an unmodified PNA oligomer and three Ru(II)-polypyridyl and/or NLS peptide based conjugates with mammalian and bacterial mimetic membranes. This article is the first report of the use of Quartz Crystal Microbalance with Dissipation monitoring (QCM-D) for this purpose.
05.03.2012
A warm welcome to our new Master student Sandro Konatschnig who has joined the group today. Sandro will work on the elaboration and biological evaluation of novel metal-based drug candidates.
05.03.2012
Two new publications of our group have been recently accepted. The first one in Curr. Op. Chem. Biol. reviews the potential that organometallic compounds have in medicinal chemistry. The second one in Dalton Trans. describes the opportunities brought by small organometallic compounds for antibacterial purposes. Congratulations to Malay for his hard work on this paper!
28.01.2012
Congratulations to Tanmaya for his paper which has been just accepted by Inorg. Chem.! In this full article, the preparation, on the solid support, of Ru-containing PNA oligomers is described. Importantly, the presence of these Ru bioconjuates could be detected by electrochemilumiscence at concentrations as low as 0.1 micromolar.
02.01.2012
After a few weeks holiday, Jeannine is starting her PhD thesis in our group. Good luck and lots of success!
10.12.2011
Last Saturday, we had a "raclette evening" to celebrate the coming festive season. 3.7 Kg of cheese (we were only 10...) and a few bottles of wine later, Anita and Danny were declared the winners of the evening - they ate up to 17 pieces of cheese. Congratulations also to Malay who "survived" his first raclette ever! You can see a few pictures of the event here!
07.12.2011
Congratulations to Jeannine who brilliantly passed her Master exam! You can see nice pictures of the after-exam party here!
After a few well-deserved weeks of holiday, Jeannine will start her PhD thesis in our group in January 2012.
25.11.2011
Two papers have been just accepted. In an article in Eur. J. Inorg. Chem., we report on the first preparation of di-hetero-organometallic-containing Peptide Nucleic Acid (PNA) Bioconjugates. In the second paper which has been accepted in Dalton Trans., we describe the preparation and characterisation of a Re-containing PNA bioconjugate. Of note, we present, to the best of our knowledge, the first utilisation of a metal-containing PNA bioconjugate for antisense purposes.
26.09.2011
We have profited of the stunning autumn weather in Zurich to take a few pictures of our group. Have a look at them here!
01.09.2011
Sarah Spreckelmeyer, who is currently undertaking her Master in Pharmacy at the Technical University in Braunschweig (Germany) is joining our group for 2 months as an exchange student. Welcome Sarah!
02.08.2011
Dr. Malay Patra, who has just finished his PhD thesis at the Ruhr-University Bochum (Germany) under the supervision of Prof. Nils Metzler-Nolte is joining our group as a post-doc. Welcome Malay!
05.07.2011
Check out in our cover gallery the front cover picture of our latest Dalton Trans. paper
01.06.2011
Cristina Mari, who has just finished a 6-month research stay at the University of Milan (Italy) in the groups of Prof. Licandro and Prof. Maiorana is joining our group as a PhD student. Cristina will work on the preparation of novel anticancer metallodrugs.
03.05.2011
Our perspective article "Metal-Containing Peptide Nucleic Acid Conjugates" has been accepted in Dalton Trans. This paper reports on the recent advances in the preparation and utilisation of metal-containing PNAs.
02.05.2011
Vanessa Pierroz, who has just finished her Master thesis in Medical Biology at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) is joining our group as a PhD student. In collaboration with Dr. Stefano Ferrari from the Institute of Molecular Cancer Research, she will work on the elucidation of the mechanism of action of novel anticancer metallodrugs.
11.04.2011
Philipp Anstätt, who has just finished a one-year research stay at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich is joining our group as a PhD student. He will work on the preparation of novel anticancer metallodrugs.
22.03.2011
The online newspaper of the University of Zurich dedicates an article about the research undertaken in our research group. Have a look! Link
04.03.2011
Our paper "Towards the Preparation of Novel Re/99mTc Tricarbonyl-Containing Peptide Nucleic Acid Bioconjugates" has been accepted in Aust. J. Chem. This paper presents the successful preparation of a novel azido group-containing ligand  (Dpam) and its subsequent couplings to a 17-mer alkyne-containing PNA oligomer using Click Chemistry to give Dpam-PNA. Our attempts to complex Dpam-PNA with [NEt4]2[ReBr3(CO)3] and the [99mTc(CO)3(H2O)3]+ moiety are also discussed in detail.
01.03.2011
The Swiss National Science Foundation has informed us that Gilles' assistant professorship application has been accepted! Since the 1st of March, Gilles is a SNSF assistant professor at the University of Zurich.
28.02.2011
Yanjun Lan, who is currently an undergraduate student at the University of Zurich is joining our group for a 4-month internship. She will work on the preparation of novel metal-containing PNAs for medicinal applications.
21.02.2011
Jeannine Hess, who has just finished her MBsc. in chemistry at the University of Zurich, is starting her Master thesis in our laboratories. She will work on the preparation of novel organometallic anthelmintic drugs.
08.11.2010
Our new freeze dryer financed by the Alfred Werner Legat Foundation has just arrived! As shown on the picture below, 24 different samples can be lyophilized at the same time. Welcome to the group, freeze dryer!

Anna in front of our new and expensive christmas tree :-)
30.09.2010
Our perspective article "Organometallic Anticancer Compounds" was accepted in J. Med. Chem. This paper reports on the recent advances in the discovery of organometallics with proven anti-proliferative activity. A special emphasis has been made on the compounds, whom molecular targets and mode of actions have been identified.
22.09.2010
Michael Kaiser, who is currently undertaking his BSc at the University of Zurich is joining the group as a voluntary laboratory assistant. He will work with Anna Leonidova on the preparation and utilisation of new metal-containing bioconjugates for medicinal and biological applications.
16.08.2010
Anna Leonidova, who has just finished her Msc. in molecular and biological chemistry at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland), is starting her PhD thesis endowed with a SNSF grant. She will work on the preparation and utilisation of new metal-containing bioconjugates for medicinal and biological applications.
01.07.2010
Our paper "Preparation, 99mTc-Labeling and Biodistribution Studies of a PNA Oligomer Containing a New Ligand Derivative of 2,2´-Dipicolylamine" was accepted in J. Inorg. Biochem. This paper presents the facile preparation of a novel bifunctional chelating for 99mTc (DPA-N3). Dpa-N3 was successfully coupled, on the solid phase, to a Peptide Nucleic Acid (PNA) oligomer employing the Click Chemistry methodology to give the expected oligomer Dpa-PNA. Subsequent labeling of Dpa-PNA with [99mTc(H2O)3(CO)3]+ afforded [99mTc(CO)3(Dpa-PNA)] in radiochemical yields > 90%. Biodistribution studies of [99mTc(CO)3(Dpa-PNA)] in Wistar rats showed a fast blood clearance and only a modest accumulation in the kidneys. Similar results were found when a mouse model (NMRI nu/nu) was used.
03.06.2010
Tanmaya Joshi from the group of Prof. Leone Spiccia, Monash University, Australia, is joining the group for three months as an exchange PhD Student. He will work on the preparation of new Ru-containing PNA oligomers.
19.05.2010
On the 19th of April 2010, the Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany, together with Rubitec Ltd has announced the results of the competition to elect the best patent application submitted in 2009 at the Ruhr-University Bochum. The patent application of Gilles and his colleagues Malay Patra and Prof. Metzler-Nolte "Metal-containing Platensimycin Analogues" has been selected to receive the prize. Gilles & his colleagues will officially receive their award on the 2nd of July 2010, in Bochum.
11.05.2010
Our paper "Sequential insertion of three different organometallics into a versatile building block containing a PNA backbone" was accepted in Dalton Trans. This paper presents the first example of the synthesis of a hetero-triorganometallic derivative of a PNA monomer derivative using Click Chemistry, amide bond formation and Sonogashira coupling as orthogonal derivatisation methods.
11.05.2010
Our new Website is now online! Please don't hesitate to contact us to give us your feedback!



Mise à jour le Lundi, 20 Mai 2013 09:24