Horst Kunz

Horst Walter Kunz (born December 3, 1940 in Frankenhausen ) is a German chemist who mainly analyzes and synthesizes compounds of carbohydrates with biological significance.

Life and research

Kunz began studying chemistry at the Humboldt University in Berlin and graduated with a doctorate from the University of Mainz in 1969 . He completed his habilitation in 1977 under Leopold Horner with a thesis on esters of acetylcholine and their application in the field of chemical protective groups . In 1979 he became associate professor for organic chemistry and in 1988 professor for bioorganic chemistry at the University of Mainz. In 1998, the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig accepted Kunz into its ranks.

Kunz's research area is glycopeptides , oligosaccharides and neoglycoproteins . He is particularly interested in glycoproteins that play a role in cell adhesion or as tumor antigens , and those that contribute to the construction of virus envelopes , such as the Gp120 of HIV-1 . To study these carbohydrate compounds, e.g. B. the solid phase synthesis or other methods of combinatorial chemistry are used.

Awards

Kunz received several science prizes, including the Max Bergmann Medal in 1992 , the Emil Fischer Medal of the Society of German Chemists in 2000 and the Adolf Windaus Medal of the Georg August University of Göttingen in 2001 .

Fonts

• Synthesis of glycopeptides, partial structures of biological recognition components. In: Angewandte Chemie Int. Ed. Engl. 26, 1987, pp. 294-308.
• with J. March: Synthesis of Glycopeptides with Lewisa Antigen Side Chain and HIV Peptide T Sequence Using the Trichloroethoxycarbonyl / Allyl Ester Protecting Group Combination. In: Synlett . 1992, p. 591.
• with G. Kretzschmer, U. Sprengard, E. Bartnik, W. Schmidt, A. Toepfer, B. Hörsch, M. Krause, D. Seiffge: Oligosaccharide Recognition by Selectins: Synthesis and Biological Activity of Multivalent Sialyl Lewis ^x Ligands. In: Tetrahedron . 51, 1995, pp. 13015-13030.
• with M. Rösch, H. Herzner, W. Dippold, M. Wild, D. Vestweber : Synthetic inhibitors of cell adhesion: a glycopeptide from the E-selectin ligand 1 (ESL-1) with an arabino-sialyl-Lewisx structure. In: Angewandte Chemie. 113, 2001, pp. 3954-3954.
• with C. Brocke: Synthetic Tumor-associated Glycopeptide Antigens from the Tandem-Repeat-Sequence of the Epithelial Mucin MUC4. In: Synthesis . 4, 2004, pp. 525-542.
• with A. Kuhn: Carbohydrate-induced peptide conformation in glycopeptides of the recognition region of LI-cadherin. In: Angewandte Chemie. 119, 2007, pp. 458-462.

swell

• Kürschner's German Scholars Calendar. Saur, Munich 2005.

Web links

• Literature by and about Horst Kunz in the catalog of the German National Library
• Horst Kunz on the website of the University of Mainz