Joe Awards, news

Joe awarded Frontiers for the Future project funding of €791k

Joe has been awarded a Frontiers for the Future Project award worth €791,010 to support new research into functional materials to prevent bacterial infection. Leveraging bioinorganic and carbohydrate chemistry concepts into a new approach. This funding will allow the Byrne Research Group to expand and explore new areas of research. Recruitment for new PhD students is already underway, along with additional advanced equipment to facilitate the research. More details are in the press release from UCD Chemistry below.

Joe spoke about the project and the funding at the end of KFM’s Kildare Today programme on 21/05/202: on-air interview (0:31:50-end, [audio clip]).

The UCD School of Chemistry has achieved a major double-win in the latest Research Ireland Frontiers for the Future funding round. Dr. Charles Loh (Awards Stream) and Dr. Joseph Byrne (Projects Stream) have been awarded a combined €2.7 million to lead two visionary projects: LIGHT4CARB and GlycoMetalGuard.

This funding milestone cements UCD’s standing as a premier European hub for fundamental chemistry, bridging the gap between curiosity-driven science and global challenges in sustainability and human health. Furthermore, this achievement is a significant testament to UCD’s leading reputation at the global forefront of innovative carbohydrate chemistry.

The Frontiers for the Future Programme—a flagship initiative of the newly established Research Ireland—specifically targets ambitious, “high-risk, high-reward” research. It is designed to empower Irish scientists to challenge existing boundaries of knowledge, delivering breakthroughs with the potential for profound societal and economic impact.

LIGHT4CARB: Led by Dr. Charles Loh, the LIGHT4CARB project focuses on the emerging field of photoredox catalysis. The team aims to harness the power of inexpensive, widely available visible light to drive complex chemical reactions. By using light as a primary energy source, the project enables the sustainable and mild synthesis of essential biomolecules, such as non-natural sugars, while drastically reducing chemical waste and energy consumption. These synthetic sugars are critical “building blocks” for a wide range of pharmaceuticals. LIGHT4CARB will hence accelerate the drug discovery pipeline, ensuring that the next generation of high-value medicines is developed through greener, more efficient chemical processes.

“I am delighted that Research Ireland has recognised LIGHT4CARB as a bold blueprint for advancing sustainable photoredox chemistry to access valuable sugar building blocks,” says Dr. Loh. “This award underscores Research Ireland’s commitment to high-quality fundamental research and positions UCD as a leading hub for transformative visible-light-driven synthesis. I am immensely excited to embark on this new research chapter, pushing the frontiers of what is possible using modern light-driven organic synthesis, and to nurture younger generations of chemists with state-of-the-art synthetic strategies.”

GlycoMetalGuard: Led by Dr. Joseph Byrne, GlycoMetalGuard is developing innovative antimicrobial coatings and therapies to prevent hospital-acquired infections stemming from medical devices. Dr. Byrne’s team aims to target harmful bacteria with novel sugar-based metal compounds, supporting efforts to addressing antimicrobial resistance and improving patient safety and quality of life. Combining expertise in inorganic chemistry, carbohydrate chemistry and polymer chemistry within the team and through strategic collaborations puts UCD in a strong position to lead this innovative approach.

Dr. Byrne says, “Prevention of bacterial infections is key to fighting the challenge of antimicrobial resistance. For many vulnerable or immunocompromised patients, medical devices like catheters or endotracheal tubes are essential, but they can also be a risk for infection in hospital. I’m delighted to have the support from Taighde Éireann to build new chemical tools that we hope will enhance medical devices to better protect vulnerable people in Ireland and beyond. Fundamental scientific research is at the foundation of addressing major societal challenges like antimicrobial resistance – my team’s exploration of infection-prevention and new treatments will also train several highly skilled chemistry researchers who will go on to make further contributions to our skills economy.”

For further details, see the announcements at various sources below:

UCD Chemistry | UCD News | UCD Research | Research Ireland | Silicon Republic | UCD Conway Institute

Joe Research mobility, Team

Wanyujin visits Aveiro as part of NET4MAT

As part of the NET4MAT Marie Curie Staff Exchanges network, in which Joe is a workpackage leader, Wanyujin recently expanded her international collaborative network through a productive secondment at the University of Aveiro, Portugal. Wanyujin worked closely with Dr. Idalina Gonçalves’s group. The exchange focused on incorporating microbial sensing of lanthanide glycoclusters into starch-based materials and exploring the synthesis of these complex molecules.

By taking the lanthanide-based sensor molecules developed in our lab to Portugal, Wanyujin successfully synthesised and characterized starch-based polymer films doped with different concentrations of Eu(III). The collaboration involved in-depth knowledge exchange on synthesising lanthanide glycoclusters, exploring the covalent functionalisation of starch, and evaluating the luminescence responses of these innovative materials.In CICECO – Aveiro Institute of Materials, Wanyujin received hands-on training in materials characterisation techniques, including contact angle, mechanical properties measurements. This will strengthening our group’s technical capabilities and international ties.

NET4MAT includes universities and companies across Europe. More information:
https://net4mat.web.ua.pt/

Ana, Margarida, Idalina (host) and Wanyujin in Aveiro
Joe Graduations, news, Team

Karolina defends her PhD thesis

Very proud of my very first PhD student Karolina Wojtczak who successfully defended her thesis last Thursday. A lot of hard work has paid off and she has left the group lots of interesting starting points for future projects (in addition to a few more imminent publications). Her thesis was titled “Metal-based glycoconjugates as molecular sensors for lectins and anti-adhesives”.

Karol was an absolute pleasure to have in my lab and I wish her all the best with her bright future. I’m sure she will achieve great things. Congratulations!

A great celebration was had in Galway to mark the occasion.

Thanks to Research Ireland (formerly SFI) (18/SIRG/5501) for financial support and Paul Murphy for co-supervising her, particularly after I moved to UCD last year.

Karol has already started a position as a Development Chemist in Sterling Pharma Solutions.

Joe Publications

ChemComm: Terbium-based lectin sensors

Congratulations to Karolina on her first article published in Chemical Communications. The article has been included in the HOT Articles 2023 Collection as well as a themed collection on Chemosensors and Molecular Logic (related to last year’s MSMLG Conference). The work was considered exciting by the editors and so was featured on the Front Cover of the journal issue.

We describe glycoconjugate terbium(III) complexes, which are able to detect carbohydrate-binding proteins in aqueous buffer solution. When the carbohydrate motif on the complex matches the target of the protein, an enhancement in lanthanide luminescence is observed. The bacterial lectin LecA (from P. aeruginosa) is one of the detected proteins.

Sensing behaviour of complexes Tb.3. See article for full description of results

This work was funded by Science Foundation Ireland (18/SIRG/5501), with support from a 4th year project student, and our collaborators in TU Dublin (Gordon Cooke) and University of Saarland (Alexander Titz, HZI/HIPS). The interdisciplinary work includes synthesis of new sensor molecules, biological assessment and examination of their lectin binding affinity. We believe this work could lead to the development of tools which could use detection of characteristic proteins from pathogens as a means for diagnosis, and hope to follow up on this in future publications.

Joe Publications

Article on lectin-inhibitors published in ChemMedChem

Karolina and Joe’s review article on “Structural considerations for building synthetic glycoconjugates as inhibitors for Pseudomonas aeruginosa lectins” has been published by ChemMedChem. The article is available here: https://doi.org/10.1002/cmdc.202200081

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a pathogenic bacterium, responsible for a large portion of nosocomial infections globally and designated as critical priority by the World Health Organisation. Its characteristic carbohydrate-binding proteins LecA and LecB, which play a role in biofilm-formation and lung-infection, can be targeted by glycoconjugates. In the review, we present the wide range of inhibitors for these proteins (136 references), highlighting structural features and which impact binding affinity and/or therapeutic effects, including carbohydrate selection; linker length and rigidity; and scaffold topology, particularly for multivalent candidates. We also discuss emerging therapeutic strategies, which build on targeting of LecA and LecB, such as anti-biofilm activity, anti-adhesion and drug-delivery, with promising prospects for medicinal chemistry.

This article would be a good entry-point for any researchers considering tackling P. aeruginosa as a target organism, particularly if they want to build lectin-targeting ligands building on the existing consensus in the field on the best structural features to ensure high lectin affinity.

Thanks to Science Foundation Ireland for funding this research.