Dr. Michał Antoszczak

I defended my PhD thesis in June 2016 and since February 2017 I have been employed as an adjunct at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. My research interests are centred on the synthetic modifications of naturally occurring compounds, particularly the complex ionophore antibiotics. More than 200 derivatives of these structures were synthesized and characterized as to their structure and biological activity. Their biological activity (anticancer, antibacterial, and antiparasitic) was evaluated in close collaboration with biologists at both Polish and foreign research centres. A key outcome of the work is that our research group has been the first to show that derivatives of salinomycin are capable of inducing apoptosis in human cancer cell lines of various origin, and moreover that thus derivatives exhibit efficacy against difficult to control pathogens, such as B. anthracis, M. tuberculosis and T. brucei. As part of my PhD studies, I also stayed for a six-month internship in the Daniel Strand group at the Lund University, Sweden. During this visit, I obtained interesting results not only in my field (natural product chemistry), but also in a side project on transition metal catalysis. This experience has considerably broadened my experimental skills and encouraged my desire to pursue new research directions. Currently, I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Raphaël Rodriguez group at the Institute Curie, Paris, France.