Dr. Matthias Schiedel receives Liebig Fellowship
Erlanger pharmacist receives prestigious habilitation fellowship
Dr. Matthias Schiedel has been employed with the Chair for Pharmaceutical Chemistry since February 2019. He has recently been honored with the Liebig Fellowship funded by the scholarship foundation of the Verbandes der Chemischen Industrie (VCI) (approx. Association for the Chemical Industry).
Matthias Schiedel studied pharmacy at the Albert-Ludwigs University of Freiburg. During the practical year of his pharmacist training, as part of his diploma thesis, he worked with the research group of Prof. Manfred Jung (University of Freiburg) on the synthesis of low-molecular inhibitors which influence epigenetic regulation mechanisms. He remained loyal to this subject matter even during hsi doctoral work in Prof. Jung’s group, and, in 2016, successfully completed his doctoral degree with honors (summa cum laude).
His doctoral thesis, “Synthesizing and Testing New Sirtuin Inhibitors and Structure-based Development of an Affinity Probe for Sirtuin 2,” also received recognition with the Carl Wilhelm Scheele Prize (2017) of the German Pharmaceutical Society (DPhG). Furthermore, he co-authored the article “Selective Sirt2 inhibition by ligand-induced rearrangement of the active site” (Nat. Commun. 6 (2015) 6263), which was honored with the PHOENIX Pharmacy Science Prize (2016).
After his doctoral work, supported by a research scholarship from the German Research Foundation (DFG), he was drawn to a two-year postdoctoral residence at the Chemical Research Laboratory (CRL) of Oxford University. In cooperation with Prof. Stuart J. Conway, he worked on the development of inhibitors for acetyllysine-binding domains of the parasite Schistosoma mansoni. During his time at Oxford, Matthias Schiedel was recognized for his outstanding achievements as a young resaercher in the area of medicinal chemistry by receiing the Klaus Grohe Prize (2018) from the German Chemical Society (GDCh).
After his return to Germany, funded by the DFG’s return grant program, Matthias Schiedel joined the working group of Prof. Peter Gmeiner at the Chair for Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg.
A central aspect of his current research is the development of chemical tools for G-Protein-Coupled receptors (GPCRs). Especially meaningful to this research are the newly discovered intracellular allosteric binding sites of certain GPCRs. Pursuring these allosteric binding sites opens up new approaches regarding the control of receptor selectivity, functional selectivity (biased signaling), as well as the introduction of innovative drug-targeting strategies.
Contact information
Dr. Matthias Schiedel
Nikolaus-Fiebiger-Str. 10
91058 Erlangen
Tel. +49 913185-65534
matthias.schiedel@fau.de