Victor J Hruby
University of Arizona, USA
Biography
During the past 45+ years Dr. Hruby and his group have been developing a multidisciplinary approach to the study of peptide hormones and neurotransmitters and their receptors (mostly GPCRs), which has as its major goal developing an understanding of the chemical/physical basis for their effects on human health and disease. This research has involved close collaboration with biologists and medical doctors. They seek to develop peptide and peptidomimetic agonist, antagonist, and inverse agonist ligands that are conformationally constrained and stable in biological environments, can cross (or not) membrane barriers including the blood brain barrier and have unique biological profiles in vivo. They have been highly successful and developed state-of-the-art peptide and peptidomimetic synthesis; asymmetric synthesis of novel chi constrained amino acids, β-turn mimetics, etc. and their chimeric derivatives; computational chemistry and molecular modeling including binding to GPCRs of interest; development of state-of-the-art NMR methods to study peptide and peptidomimetic conformations in solution and in membrane environments, and conformations when interacting (binding) to their receptors.
Abstract
