Dr. Gerbrand van der Heden van Noort

Research:

I am trained as an organic chemist and have dedicated most of my research on developing methodologies to chemically prepare post-translational modified peptides and proteins. Using chemistry to make such often delicate structures is an exciting challenge, that opens the opportunity to make mutations, incorporate non-natural amino acids or attach fluorophores or reactive elements. Having full control over each amino acid position allows the design of (activity-based) probes and assay reagents based on ubiquitin or ubiquitin-like proteins and the use of chemical biology techniques to interrogate the complex ubiquitin proteasome system. My interest lies  in preparing complex (poly-)ubiquitin chains and/or ADPr-molecules and probes based thereof to investigase Ub-ligases and proteases involved in the interplay between ADPribosylation and ubiquitin conjugation, found to be crucial in amongst other bacterial infections or DNA damage responses.

Curriculum Vitae:

I completed my PhD in organic chemistry at Leiden University studying synthetic methods to obtain naturally occurring hybrid biomolecules consisting of a nucleic acid and a peptide part, such as viral nucleoproteins and the post-translational modification called Adenosine Di-Phosphate ribosylation (ADPr). I then moved to the Humboldt University in Berlin as a Rubicon Postdoctoral fellow investigating the use of PNA-probes to overcome target inhibition in nucleic acid templated reactions. In 2014 I joined the Ovaa group as NWO-VENI laureate working on the design of novel tools to specifically target distinct poly-Ubiquitin topologies using a chemical biology approach.  After obtaining a NWO VIDI grant and a ZonMW Off-road grant  in 2018 allowing me to start my own lab an ERC consolidator grant in 2022 further allowed me to continue studying the fascinating crosstalk between ubiquitination and ADPribosylation involved in bacterial infection and certain cancer types.

Awarded Grants:

ENW-M Grant (2024) -  NWO [360 kEU]

Incentive Grant (2023) -  LUMC [200 kEU]

Consolidator (2022) - ERC- [2 MEU]

VIDI (2018) - NWO - [800 kEU]

Off-Road (2018) - ZonMW -  [100 kEU]

VENI (2014) - NWO - [250 kEU]

Rubicon (2012) - NWO - [150 kEU]