Dr. Michael Grigalunas

Project Group Leader, Chemical Biology

Research Interests

Natural products represent Nature’s exploration of chemical space through evolution. Our lab is interested in exploring biologically-relevant chemical space through the chemical evolution of natural product structure guided by the concept of pseudo-natural products. This entails the synthetic combination of natural product fragments to arrive at scaffolds that are natural product-like but are not accessible through existing biosynthetic pathways. Through phenotypic assays and morphological profiling, we hope to identify pseudo-natural products with unexpected or new bioactivities.

 

Selected publications

Young RJ, Flitsch SL, Grugalunas M, Leeson PD, Quinn RJ, Turner NJ, Waldmann H (2022). The Time and Place for Nature in Drug Discovery. JACS
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Grigalunas M, Brakmann S, Waldmann H (2022). Chemical Evolution of Natural Product Structure. J Am Chem Soc.
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Grigalunas M, Burhop A, Zinken S, Pahl A, Gally JM, Wild N, Mantel Y, Sievers S, Foley DJ, Scheel R, Strohmann C, Antonchick AP, Waldmann H (2021). Natural product fragment combination to performance-diverse pseudo-natural products. Nat Commun.
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Grigalunas M, Burhop A, Christoforow A, Waldmann H (2020). Pseudo-natural products and natural product-inspired methods in chemical biology and drug discovery Curr. Opin. Chem. Biol
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