Every year, one of the IOCB Invited Lectures, which host top scientists from around the world, is dedicated to the memory of Professor Antonín Holý, whose molecules help treating millions of patients with HIV or HBV. This year, we were honored to have Karl-Heinz Altmann from the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences at ETH Zürich deliver the 2022 Tony Holý Lecture.
Professor Altmann’s research is focused on the interface between chemistry and biology, with a particular focus on the chemical synthesis and the biological and pharmacological profiling of biologically active natural products and their synthetic and semi-synthetic analogs.
His talk entitled “Total Synthesis and Functional Exploration of Macrocyclic Natural Products” focused on macrocyclic secondary metabolites, particularly on selected aspects of the synthetic chemistry, medicinal chemistry, and chemical biology of two macrocyclic natural products, the marine macrolide zampanolide and the bacterial metabolite rhizoxin F (WF-1360F), which are potent inhibitors of human cancer cell proliferation in vitro.
At the end of the lecture, Prof. Altmann received the Tony Holý Lecture plaque from Prof. Jan Konvalinka, director of IOCB Prague.
