Helma Wennemers

Helma B. Wennemers (born 24 June 1969 in Offenbach am Main) is a German organic chemist. She is a professor of organic chemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich).

Education

Helma Wennemers studied chemistry at the Goethe University Frankfurt, completing her diploma thesis with Gerhard Quinkert [de] in 1993. She earned her PhD at Columbia University, New York in 1996, under the supervision of W. Clark Still, with a thesis "Encoded combinatorial chemistry: a tool for the study of selective intermolecular interactions." Between 1996 and 1998, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Nagoya University with Hisashi Yamamoto, before being appointed Bachem Assistant Professor at the University of Basel in 1999. She held this post until 2003, where she was promoted to associate professor. In 2011, she moved to ETH Zurich as a professor of organic chemistry.

Research

Wennemers' research focuses on proline-rich peptides.

• Asymmetric Catalysis:

Wennemers led the development of tripeptides containing H-Pro-Pro-Xaa type sequences (Pro: proline, Xaa: any amine) as organocatalysts for C–C bond formations based on an enamine mechanism.^[1] High reactivity, stereo- and chemoselectivity for aldol^[2] or conjugate addition reactions^[3][4] can be achieved by varying the absolute configuration of the single amino acids as well as the functional group of the Xaa residue. The modularity of the peptides enabled creation of catalysts capable of catalyzing the conjugate addition reactions of aldehydes to nitroolefins with as little as 0.05 mol% of tripeptidic catalyst.^[5]

She also worked on other organocatalyzed transformations. Inspired by natural polyketide synthases—which use malonic acid half thioesters (MAHTs) as thioester enolate equivalents — she developed organocatalytic methods for stereoselective addition reactions of MAHTs (and protected variants monothiomalonates, MTMs) to electrophiles using cinchona alkaloid derived catalysts. The introduction of fluorinated MAHTs and MTMs allowed for the stereoselective introduction of fluorine substituents in fluoroacetate aldol reactions^[6] as well as further addition reactions to imines^[7] and nitroolefins.^[8]

• Chemical Biology
  :

In chemical biology, Wennemers uses larger

Wennemers work was recognized by the Leonidas Zervas Award of the European Peptide Society (2010),^[16] the Pedler Award of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2016),^[17] the Inhoffen Medal (2017),^[18] the Netherlands Scholar Award for Supramolecular Chemistry (2019)^[19] and the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award (2020).^[20]

References