Dr Alexander Kiefer
Having completed his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Uli Kazmaier at Saarland University, Alexander has honed skills in both classic total synthesis and medicinal chemistry-approaches to obtained cyclomarins with improved antimicrobial activities. During his short postdoctoral stay at Aalto University in Finland under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Jan Deska, he shifted from classical total synthesis to chemoenzymatic synthesis, focusing on the structurally unique angiopterlactone B. He successfully developed an efficient chemo-inspired biocatalytic total synthesis that integrated native enzymatic substrate conversion with artificial modules featuring abiotic transformations. After joining Prof. Dr. Anna Hirsch’s lab at the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) in mid-2019, he was involved in a variety of research projects centered on medicinal chemistry. With support of the DFG Walter Benjamin Program Fellowship, he transitioned to Prof. Dr. Ben Shen’s lab at Scripps Florida in early 2022, where he was a project leader, guiding an interdisciplinary team from three different labs. His research endeavors were centered on the development of anthraquinone-fused enediyne-based antibody-drug conjugates as promising anticancer agents. Upon returning to HIPS in mid-2024 on a DFG Walter Benjamin Return Fellowship, he was awarded the prestigious 21st Helmholtz Investigator Groups grant. This enabled him to establish his research group, focusing on natural product-inspired drug development at the interface of chemistry and biology.
