Name Morten Meldal | Role Chemist | |
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Morten P. Meldal (born 1954 in Denmark) is a Danish chemist. He is a professor of Chemistry at University of Copenhagen in Copenhagen, Denmark. He is best known for developing the CuAAC-click reaction Meldal first received a B.S. degree and then a Ph.D. degree in Chemical Engineering from DTU; his Ph.D. work focused on the synthetic chemistry of oligosaccharides. From 1983-1988 he worked as independent research associate in organic chemistry at DTU and University of Copenhagen. He then (1985–1986) performed postdoctoral work at Cambridge University; he was a postdoctoral research associate at the Medical Research Council Center, Laboratory of Molecular Biology. In 1996 he was appointed adjunct professor at Danish Technical University. Since 1998 he has led the synthesis group in the Department of Chemistry of the Carlsberg Laboratory and since 1997 head of the SPOCC Center.
Contents
- Morten Meldal Reality is much more complex than we as chemists are able to imagine
- Biography
- Achievements
- Awards and honors
- References
Morten Meldal: “Reality is much more complex than we, as chemists, are able to imagine”
Biography
In Meldal's early career he developed several technological techniques and instruments for peptide synthesis. He developed the multiple column synthesis used in peptide and organic synthesis instrumentation as well as for assembly large split-mix libraries. Later on Meldal first presented the (cycloaddition) of acetylenes and azides used in peptide and protein conjugations, in polymers and in Material sciences. Meldal's group has then showed this reaction to be completely orthogonal to the majority of functional group chemistries. Continuing they developed solid supports that have facilitated the merger of solid phase peptide- and peptide-organic chemistry with solid phase chemical biology and protein chemistry.
More recently Meldal has developed an optical encoding technique and has been focused on the merger of organic chemistry and peptide chemistry on solid support. He has devised a range of novel methods on the generation of N-acyl iminium ions which combinatorial libraries of these compounds have generated and screened for active GPCR substances in cell-based on-bead screening.
Achievements
Awards and honors
His group have published over 250 articles and have filed 20 patents covering areas both in organic and bioorganic chemistry.