Vincent Semetey receives one of three Honorable Mention awards associated with the IUPAC Prize for Young Chemists, for his Ph.D. thesis work entitled "N,N'-linked urea oligomers: synthesis, conformational studies and self-assembly properties."

Current address (at the time of application)

Department of Chemistry and Biological Chemistry, Harvard University, 12 Oxford Street, Cambridge MA 02138, USA

E-mail: [email protected]

Academic degrees

Ph.D. Thesis

Title N,N'-linked urea oligomers: synthesis, conformational studies and self-assembly properties
Advisers Profs. G. Guichard and J. P. Briand
Thesis Committee Maurice Goeldner, Laboratoire de Chimie Bioorganique, Louis Pasteur University, Strasbourg, France; Ivan Huc, Laboratoire de Chimie Supramoleculaire, European Institute for Chemistry and Biology, Bordeaux, France; Gérard Chassaing, Laboratoire de Chimie Structurale organique et biologique, Pierre and Marie Curie University, Paris, France; Andre Aubry, Laboratoire de Cristallographie et Modelisation des Materiaux Mineraux et Biologiques, Henri Poincarre University, Nancy, France.

Essay

The functional diversity in proteins, although mediated by sophisticated tertiary and quaternary structures, relies on a small set of distinct secondary structural elements: sheets, helices and turns. Search for new nonnatural oligomers ("foldamers") designed to reproduce or mimic the essential protein features have gained considerable interest with potential application in pharmaceutical research. Seminal works published by the groups of Seebach, Gellman and Hanessian have revealed that short peptides made exclusively with enantiopure b- or g-amino acids, correctly substituted, could form stable helical or pleated-sheet-type structures in solution and in the solid state.

Full text [pdf file - 694KB]

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