skip to content

Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry

 

Teaching Professor of Chemistry

Current positions


I am a Teaching Fellow in Inorganic Chemistry for the Department of Chemistry, the acting Senior Tutor at Churchill College, and I teach a summer course at the Institute of Continuing Education in Madingley.  My teaching duties include lecturing, demonstrating in the practical classes and small group tutorials for chemistry students from all four years of the Natural Sciences degree.  I encourage students to think laterally about the subject and to make connections between topics through collaborative discussion and linking theoretical chemistry work to practical sessions.


Research interests


My research is aimed at understanding the chemistry of ruthenium-containing molecules in biological settings such as anticancer treatments, with the aim of creating less toxic and more effective drug therapies.


Ruthenium organometallic fragments for augmenting binding of validated medicinal compounds


Ruthenium is one of the most promising metals used in the synthesis of anti-tumour compounds for chemotherapy.1 The properties of the metal lend themselves well to medicinal applications in terms of geometry, accessible oxidation states and relevant substitution kinetics and the diversity of ruthenium compounds that show cytotoxicity is somewhat startling (Figure 1).


 



Fig. 1 - Chemical structures of a selection of ruthenium compounds that display cytotoxicity. Clockwise from top left: NAMI-A1, RAPTA-B3,4, a tri- ruthenium cluster5 and α-[Ru(azpy) 2Cl2]3.6


The targets of ruthenium-based antitumour compounds have yet to be defined, however, and so the rationale design of new, more potent compounds presents a problem. Recently, a small body of research has been aimed at the "directing" of precious metal interactions to specific enzymatic targets by connection of such complexes to an organic ligand. Precious metals are ideally suited to this end; their (relatively slow) ligand exchange rates are similar to the lifetimes of cellular processes and they are capable of forming highly energetically-favourable coordination bonds to the physiological target. Owing to their enthalpic favourability, as few as one or two such bonds would be sufficient to impart a marked increase on target inhibition. Indeed, given the hypothesis of Kuntz et al7, it is predicted that compounds of this nature should display augmented ligand efficiency compared with the organic directing molecule alone.


The aim of my research is to build ruthenium organometallic groups into validated, medicinal compounds such that the ligand efficiency of these existing compounds can be improved upon. In the longer term, it is hoped that the central approach described will set a precedent for inclusion of metal-containing fragments in libraries for fragment assembly. The capacity to dramatically increase ligand efficiency and to offer tunable lability and variable hypervalancy within a library could signal a new era in the field of fragment-based drug discovery and medicinal pharmaceuticals.

Publications

Controlled Ligand Exchange Between Ruthenium Organometallic Cofactor Precursors and a Naïve Protein Scaffold Generates Artificial Metalloenzymes Catalysing Transfer Hydrogenation
GS Biggs, OJ Klein, SL Maslen, JM Skehel, TJ Rutherford, SMV Freund, F Hollfelder, SR Boss, PD Barker
– Angewandte Chemie
(2021)
133,
11014
Controlled Ligand Exchange Between Ruthenium Organometallic Cofactor Precursors and a Naïve Protein Scaffold Generates Artificial Metalloenzymes Catalysing Transfer Hydrogenation
GS Biggs, OJ Klein, SL Maslen, JM Skehel, TJ Rutherford, SMV Freund, F Hollfelder, SR Boss, PD Barker
– Angew Chem Int Ed Engl
(2021)
60,
10919
Unlocking the Full Evolutionary Potential of Artificial Metalloenzymes Through Direct Metal-Protein Coordination A review of recent advances for catalyst development
GS Biggs, OJ Klein, SR Boss, PD Barker
– Johnson Matthey Technology Review
(2020)
64,
407
Use of a fluorinated probe to quantitatively monitor amino acid binding preferences of ruthenium(ii) arene complexes
GS Biggs, MJ O'Neill, P Carames Mendez, TG Scrase, Y Lin, AM Bin-Maarof, AD Bond, SR Boss, PD Barker
– Dalton Trans
(2019)
48,
6910
Selective Lability of Ruthenium(II) Arene Amino Acid Complexes
TG Scrase, MJ O'Neill, AJ Peel, PW Senior, PD Matthews, H Shi, SR Boss, PD Barker
– Inorganic Chemistry
(2015)
54,
3118
Folates are potential ligands for ruthenium compounds in vivo
TG Scrase, SM Page, PD Barker, SR Boss
– Dalton Trans.
(2014)
43,
8158
Cobalt catalyzed carbon nanotube growth on graphitic paper supports
V Engels, J Geng, GM Jones, JA Elliott, AEH Wheatley, SR Boss
– Current Nanoscience
(2011)
7,
315
Toward an understanding of the oxygen scavenging properties of lithium zincates
SR Boss, R Haigh, DJ Linton, AEH Wheatley
– Phosphorus, Sulfur and Silicon and the Related Elements
(2010)
179,
929
Tuning heavy metal compounds for anti-tumor activity: is diversity the key to ruthenium's success?
SM Page, SR Boss, PD Barker
– Future Medicinal Chemistry
(2009)
1,
541
Groups 1 and 11: The Alkali and Coinage Metals
SR Boss, AEH Wheatley
– Organometallic Chemistry
(2007)
33,
1
  • 1 of 2
  • >

Research Interest Groups

Telephone number

01223 331696
36335 (shared)

Email address

srb39@cam.ac.uk