Jutta Eichler
Professor of Medicinal Chemistry
University of Erlangen-Nurnberg
Talk Information
Protein Modification, Structural Insights, and Disease State
18 June 2025, 08:55am - 09:10am, in the Pacific Jewel Ballroom
– Bind & Bite: Covalently Stabilized Heterodimeric Coiled-Coil Peptides for the Site-Selective Chemical Modification of Proteins
Professor Jutta Eichler is a distinguished medicinal chemist specializing in peptide science and bioorganic chemistry. She holds the position of Professor of Medicinal Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, FAU, in Germany.
Academic Background
Professor Eichler earned her Dr. rer. nat. in 1991 from Humboldt University Berlin. She completed her habilitation in bioorganic chemistry at the Technical University Braunschweig in 2004. Her postdoctoral research included positions at the Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies in San Diego, where she advanced from postdoctoral fellow to assistant member between 1991 and 1998.
Research Focus
Professor Eichler's research centers on the design and synthesis of bioactive peptides and peptide-based therapeutics. Her work encompasses chemo-selective ligation strategies for proteins, structure-based design of antiviral peptides, and the development of peptide ligands for therapeutic applications.
Notable Contributions
Throughout her career, Professor Eichler has held significant roles, including Director of Combinatorial Chemistry at Graffinity Pharmaceutical Design GmbH and Group Leader at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research. Since 2008, she has been a professor at FAU, contributing extensively to the field of medicinal chemistry.
Awards and Honors
Professor Eichler was honored with the BioFuture Award from the German Federal Department of Education and Research in 2001, providing substantial research support over five years. She has also served as Vice Chair of the Board of the Joint Working Group Chemical Biology since 2011 and as Dean of Studies for Pharmacy and Food Chemistry at FAU since 2009.
Professional Engagements
Beyond her research, Professor Eichler is an active member of FAU's Profile Center Immunomedicine and the Research Center for New Bioactive Compounds. Her contributions have significantly advanced the understanding and application of peptide-based therapeutics in medicinal chemistry.
Bind&Bite: Covalently Stabilized Heterodimeric Coiled-Coil Peptides for the Site-Selective Chemical Modification of Proteins
Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy, and Institute of Clinical and Molecular Virology, University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany
Ensuring site-selectivity in covalent chemical modifications of proteins is one of the major challenges in chemical biology, medicinal chemistry, and related disciplines. We have modified a pair of heterodimeric coiled-coil peptides to enable the selective covalent stabilization of the dimer without using enzymes or cysteine moieties.
Fusion of one peptide to the protein of interest, in combination with linking the desired chemical modification to the complementary peptide, facilitates stable, site-selective attachment of the chemical moiety to the protein, through the formation of the covalently stabilized coiled-coil1. This ligation method was successfully used to selectively modify the HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein2, as well as to generate Fc fusion proteins of synthetic antibody mimetic peptides.
Furthermore, selectively addressing individual positions enabled the generation of mutually selective pairs of coiled-coil peptides1, for applications such as the concurrent chemical modification of more than one protein with more than one chemical entity, as well as the heterodimerization of proteins.
1. Beutel J, Tannig P, Di Vincenzo R, Schumacher T, Überla K, Eichler J. RSC Chem. Biol. 2023, 4, 794.
2. Di Vincenzo R, Beutel J, Arnold P, Wang Y, Damm D, Tannig P, Lux A, Temchura V, Eichler J, Überla K. Front. Immunol. 2024, 8, 1344346.