Anti-infectives from Microbiota
The department of Prof Christine Beemelmanns focuses on the identification and functional analysis of novel anti-infective natural products from microbial communities. Co-cultivation studies as well as cell-based assays in combination with chemical-analytical and molecular-biological methods are used to evaluate and prioritize novel natural product producers. The department uses established and innovative metabolomic-, activity and genome-based methods to identify and determine the structure of the secreted natural products. Based on the isolated novel natural substances, the functional analysis and evaluation of their range of effects is carried out. This department is located at the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS).
Leader
Prof Christine Beemelmanns
We use microbial interaction studies, molecular biology and synthetic approaches to advance the identification and production of drug candidates from natural products.
Christine Beemelmanns studied Chemistry at the RWTH Aachen, and after graduation went to Japan for a one-year research stay in the group of Prof. Sodeoka at RIKEN. Back in Germany she worked at the FU Berlin with Prof. Reißig and received her PhD in Organic Chemistry. She then worked another six month in Japan at the University of Tokyo under the supervision of Prof K. Suzuki and joined shortly afterwards the group of Prof. Clardy at Harvard Medical School (Boston) in 2011.
End of 2013, she received a call from the Hans-Knöll Institute (HKI) to work there as a Junior Research Group leader in the field of Natural Products Chemistry and Chemical Biology.
In 2020, she was elected as Margaret L. and Harlan L. Goering Visiting Professors in Organic Chemistry at UW Madison (spring term 2020).
In 2022 was appointed Professor for Biochemistry of Microbial Metabolism at the Leipzig University. In October 2022 she accepted a call for the Full Professorship on Medicinal-Pharmaceutical Microbiota Research at Saarland University together with the HIPS.
Her research combines different aspects of natural product chemistry, applied microbiology and organic and natural product chemistry and aims to chemically and to functionally characterize microbial signaling and defense molecules in different model systems. The analysis of ancient and evolved microbial interactions allows her to discover unprecedented chemical core structures with potential pharmaceutical potential.
Further Information
A current overview of the team and further information about the research group can be found on the HIPS page.