Having completed his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Uli Kazmaier at Saarland University, Alexander has honed skills in both classic total synthesis and medicinal chemistry-approaches to obtained cyclomarins with improved antimicrobial activities. During his short postdoctoral stay at Aalto University in Finland under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Jan Deska, he shifted from classical total synthesis to chemoenzymatic synthesis, focusing on the structurally unique angiopterlactone B. He successfully developed an efficient chemo-inspired biocatalytic total synthesis that integrated native enzymatic substrate conversion with artificial modules featuring abiotic transformations. After joining Prof. Dr. Anna Hirsch’s lab at the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) in mid-2019, he was involved in a variety of research projects centered on medicinal chemistry. With support of the DFG Walter Benjamin Program Fellowship, he transitioned to Prof. Dr. Ben Shen’s lab at Scripps Florida in early 2022, where he was a project leader, guiding an interdisciplinary team from three different labs. His research endeavors were centered on the development of anthraquinone-fused enediyne-based antibody-drug conjugates as promising anticancer agents. After returning to HIPS on a DFG Walter Benjamin Return Fellowship in mid-2024, he is leveraging this comprehensive expertise pursuing natural product-inspired drug research at the interface of chemistry and biology.

Natural products (NPs) have historically played a crucial role in drug discovery due to their bioactivity-rich scaffolds, which serve as valuable templates for therapeutic agents. However, their use in drug development has dwindled, primarily because of the difficulties associated with isolating these compounds from natural sources or the limitations of conventional synthetic methods. By harnessing the unique reactivity and selectivity of enzymes from NP biosynthetic pathways combined with cutting-edge organic chemistry techniques, he aims to develop practical solutions to access those NPs and their analogs. Besides developing feasible synthetic routes for biologically active NPs, he’s focusing on the discovery of novel biocatalysts. By generating a biocatalyst library, he aims to fortify the traditional synthetic toolkit available for NP synthesis while providing deeper insights into underexplored enzyme chemistry.