The chemistry prize must be respected!

After a close friend was diagnosed with cancer, medical student Emeric Bomans at KU Leuven decided to run the Antwerp full marathon on October 19, 2025. I am joining this year as well.
Please consider donating to Emeric’s cause. And any gift above 40 EUR is tax deductable (in Belgium).

Some journeys are even tougher – getting diagnosed and facing a battle with cancer, for example. Fortunately, I have never encountered this, but many people have.

Because phosphonate esters can be steered in their selectivity, we think that these molecules will find future use for real-time imaging of various serine proteases in dynamic processes.

Congrats to first author JP, who did the bulk of the work during his PhD, from chemical synthesis of these challenging molecules, to biochemistry and cell biology. Thanks also to Jonathan, Marcin and Dimitris who performed experiments at the revision stage.

This year, we ran 14.25 km, referring to the year that KU Leuven was founded, now 600 years ago.

Congrats to all authors and thanks to Michel Sanner and Stefano Forli at Scripps for the collaboration.

We think that the SODA building blocks are beneficial because the ID-ing of modification sites is now independent of probe structure, which is particularly attractive for probes that are prone to fragmentation, such as peptide-based probes.

In silico docking revealed that residues in close proximity to the diazirine nitrogen were also amongst the modified residues detected in the LC-MS3 measurements.

As proof of principle, we incorporated the SODA building blocks into Pepstatin A, a natural product that targets aspartic proteases. We were able to covalently modify target proteases, optimize sulfoxide cleavage, and identify the modification site on the target protease.

Are you interested in chemical biology approaches and like to work in an interdisciplinary and international environment, with excellent scientific training possibilities? See above links for details on the projects and how to apply!

The policy and decisions of the current US president have nothing to do with democracy. Republicans in congress should take a good look in the mirror and stand up against his actions, because I am sure this type of ruling of the country is not what any party in the US actually wants.