Jovica Badjic
Ohio State University, OH·Chemistry
Some molecules can be built with a hollow interior, like a tiny cup or cage, sized and lined so that only certain other molecules will slip inside. That makes them useful for two opposite jobs: holding a drug so it can be released where it is needed, or mopping up a toxic compound so it does less harm.
- Fields
Chemistry
Pharmacology
- Topics
supramolecular chemistry
host-guest chemistry
molecular recognition
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Dec 2029
What they work on
- Synthesize polyanionic, dendritic pillar[6]arenes with stable pS or pR planar chirality and a nonpolar pocket shielded by anionic groups, and test their ability to bind chiral steroids differing in charge and number of stereocenters in water.
- Build polyanionic dendritic baskets with an ultra-deep, narrow aromatic pocket matched to alkaloids, and use binding studies to establish how effectively and selectively these nitrogen-containing natural products can be detected and sequestered.
- Test the computational prediction that delta-cyclodextrins, large sugar rings, encircle the base of molecular baskets, and quantify how strongly the resulting assemblies encapsulate the toxic anticancer drug methotrexate.
- Prepare basket-pillararene conjugates with two belts of functional groups and measure binding of tobacco pyridine alkaloids, stimulants, opioids and hallucinogens, testing whether full enclosure and desolvation give tighter complexes.
- Examine whether methotrexate folds to fit deeper-cavity baskets lined with negatively charged carboxylates, using experimental binding studies and computation.
- Construct water-soluble covalent basket cages shaped as truncated tetrahedra with four baskets at the corners, and test whether four anticancer drugs are encapsulated cooperatively over a narrow concentration window.
More about the research
Doing this in water, where the surrounding solvent competes for every binding site, is the hard part. Work here designs such container molecules, measures how tightly and how selectively they grab biologically important guests in water, and uses computation alongside experiment to explain why.
Why it matters
Many clinical drugs cause serious side effects, and overdoses and intoxications from opioids, stimulants and nicotine are a public health problem. Container molecules that selectively capture a specific compound in water could help in formulating drugs for targeted delivery, in detecting or isolating alkaloids, and in sequestering toxic agents such as the chemotherapy drug methotrexate to reduce its harm. The binding rules uncovered would guide the design of future sequestering agents.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Lyle Isaacs
University of Maryland, MD·Chemistry
Synthesize acyclic cucurbit[n]uril (CB[n]) containers that vary in glycoluril building blocks, aromatic walls and solubilizing groups, and map how each change alters binding strength toward drugs and toxins in buffered water.
Wenqi Liu
University of South Florida, FL·Chemistry·Early-career
Design and synthesize acyclic (open-chain) receptors that use ion-dipole and electrostatic interactions to bind lithium ions selectively over competing metal ions, and measure their binding in solution.
Christopher Hartley
Miami University-Oxford, OH·Chemistry
Determine how chains that combine attractive and repulsive interactions within a single molecule fold, programming structure by inserting pyrazine-2,3-diyl units, nitrogen-containing aromatic rings, into ortho-phenylene sequences.
The school
Ohio State University: 71 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 882 research doctorates a year.
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