Research Unit

The main scientific focus of the laboratory is in the field of chemistry in connection with life and health. Based on molecular approaches, the research axes of the laboratory include synthetic methodology, physico-chemical study, modeling and analysis, and this around diagnostic and therapeutic approaches.

Thanks to a coherent set of expertise ranging from synthesis methodology to bio-analysis, the laboratory is characterized by its ability to propose new biologically relevant molecules using original routes, whether modified nucleic acids, organometallics or small organic molecules.

The laboratory is made up of administrative and technical support, structured in three platforms, and three research teams.

The team develops its research axes articulated on Synthetic Chemistry for Health and on Chemistry in Confined Environments. The projects developed within the team are essentially oriented towards the design, synthesis and evaluation of acyclic and macrocyclic compounds on different biological targets related to tuberculosis. In an original way, these projects are partly built around a chemistry in confined environment to promote the synthesis of molecules of interest.

It centers its activities around chirality and its issues related to the molecules of the living, their synthesis, their recognition and their biological activity. Its project has three main axes, modified nucleic acids, pharmacological lipids and iminosugars. The first axis brings together aspects of DNA-based recognition and catalysis. The second axis concerns the development, from design to asymmetric synthesis, of lipids with anti-cancer aims. The third axis deals with the design and synthesis of iminosugars as effectors of glycosidases involved in lysosomal storage diseases.
These three axes are linked by two transversal themes using, on the one hand, ionic liquids as media for the catalysis or structuring of nucleic acids and, on the other hand, streptocyanins for the development of fluorescent probes.

 MagenTa  team was created in September 2019 as a continuation of the SOMAB (Organometallic Probes for Biomedical Applications) team in order to porvide original markers and efficient analysis tools for biomedical applications with diagnostic and/or therapeutic purposes. MagenTa is pursuing its activities on the development of functional metal complexes that are stable in biological media, such as long-lived luminophores (europium, terbium, rhenium), contrast agents (gadolinium) or radiopharmaceuticals (technetium-99m, indium-111, rhenium-188, yttrium-90). The team is now interested in molecules called PhotoCORMs (Photochemically CO-Releasing Molecules) which allow the controlled production of CO in time period and space under the action of light. In addition, the team is expanding the range of complexing ligands developed so far to new multifunctional polyphenolic platforms. Their polyvalent character is currently being studied in the context of pathologies linked to oxidative stress..