Chirality Group
RESEARCH THEMES
Our group has interest in the development of new chemical production routes and products that consume less of the resources of nature and minimize risks on human health and our environment either during manufacturing or during or after functional use of the chemicals. Our routes include non-conventional flash chemistry process where the miniaturization of the catalytic reactions and chiral analysis are performed in integrated systems of micro-reactors for chiral drug development and combinatorial approaches. Our approaches to access enantiomerically pure compounds include enzyme and metal catalysis. This is followed by chiral analysis to assess the enantiomeric purity of the product using GC, HPLC and CE equipped with new chiral stationary phases consisting of polymer and silica monolith. The group has also interest in integrated technologies to analyze dry blood spots. This is a result of the innovation connection grant with MyHealthtest as well as the recently awarded $8.7 M CRC-P entitled “Next generation dried blood-spot testing using LC/MS”
http://www.chiralitygroup.com/
CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECTS
- Commercialization of diagnostic tests
- Next generation of dried blood spot pathology testing using LC-MS
- Synthesis of new chiral dirhodium catalysts for asymmetric catalysis
- Chiral separation of pharmaceuticals using new chiral stationary phases
- Lipase catalysis
CURRENT RESEARCH FUNDING
- Department of industry, innovation and Science (CRC-P)
- STREM Chemicals
- Australian Academy of Science
Collaborations
- Prof. Volker Schurig, University of Tuebingen, Germany, (Chirality)
- Prof. Paul Muller, University of Geneva, Switzerland, http://www.unige.ch/sciences/chiorg/muller/research ( Dirhodium catalysis)
- Prof. Paul Haddad, University of Tasmania, Australia, Monoliths/Bioanalysis)
- Prof. Uwe Bornscheuer, University of Greifswald, Germany, (Lipase catalysis)
- Prof. Nobuo Tanaka, Kyoto Institute of Technology, Japan, (Silica Monoliths)
- Prof. Tohru Ikegami, Kyoto Institute of Technology, Japan, (Silica Monoliths)
- Professor Kostya Ostrikov: CSIRO Chief Executive Officer Science Leader (Carbon Nanotube)
- Prof. Nina Berova, University of Columbia, USA, http://www.columbia.edu/cu/chemistry/groups/nakanishi/nina/ (Chirality)
- Prof. Colin Raston, University of Western Australia, Australia, http://www.strategicnano.uwa.edu.au/ (Nano materials)
- Dr Michael Gardiner, University of Tasmania, Australia, http://fcms.its.utas.edu.au/scieng/chem/pagedetails.asp?lpersonId=65 (Catalysis)
- Dr Joselito Quirino, University of Tasmania, Australia, http://fcms.its.utas.edu.au/scieng/chem/pagedetails.asp?lpersonId=4811 (Capillary Chromatography)
- Prof. Sherif ElSafty, National Institute for Material Science, Japan http://samurai.nims.go.jp/Sherif_ELSAFTY-e.html (Nano materials)