Paul Keller

Position:              Associate Professor
Room:                  18.222
Phone No:          +61 2 4221 4692
Email:                   keller@uow.edu.au
Lab/other loc:    18.220
Lab phone:         +61 2 4221 3510       

Research Interests

Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry

Organic Synthesis

1. The design and synthesis of chiral ligands for metal catalysed reactions - chiral diamines, diphosphines and diarsines.
2. Fullerenyl amino acid oligomers as energy harvestors.
3. Cascade reactions of indigos.  One and two step synthesis of wienol heterocycles.

Medicinal Chemistry

1. The design and synthesis of anti-viral drug-targets include HIV, dengue fever and the chikungunya virus.
2. New anti-bacterial agents targeting multidrug resistant microbes (c. difficile, VRE, MRSA).
3. The synthesis of radiolabelled markers for the early detection of Parkinson's disease.

Natural Product Chemistry

1. Antarctic moss as proxies for climate change.
2. Indonesian ephiphytes.
3. The colours of Australia.
4. Ethnopharmacology studies of Bhutanese traditional medicine (with Prof. Stephen Pyne).

Representative Publications
 

Steven M. Wales, Anthony C. Willis and Paul A. Keller, The first syntheses of enantiopure 2,2'-biindoline, Chem. Commun. 2010¸ 46, 9226-9228.

Abdel-Hamid, M. K.; Bremner, J. B.; Coates, J.; Keller, P. A.; Miländer, C.; Torkamani, Y. S.; Skelton, B. W.; White, A. H.; Willis, A. C.; Novel Spiro and Fused Heterocycles from the Allylation of Indigo through Domino Nucleophilic Reactions, 2009, Tetrahedron Lett. 50, 6947-6950.

Stevens, A. J.; Gahan, M. E.; Mahalingam, S.; Keller, P. A. The Medicinal Chemistry of Dengue Fever, J. Med. Chem. 2009, 52, 7911-7926.

John B. Bremner, Paul A. Keller, Stephen G. Pyne, Timothy P. Boyle, Zinka Brkic, Dorothy M. David, Jody Morgan, Mark Robertson, Kittiya Somphol, Paul Ambrose, Sujata Bhavnani, T. R. Fritsche, D. J. Biedenbach, R. N. Jones, M. H. Miller, R. W. Buckheit, Jr, K. M. Watson, Dean Baylis, Jonathan A. Coates, John Deadman, Dharshini Jeevarajah, Andrea McCracken, and David I. Rhodes, Combating Vancomycin- and Methicillin-resistant Bacteria: Novel Binaphthyl-based Small Dicationic Peptoids with Therapeutic Potential, Angew Chemie 2010, , 537-540.

Graham E. Ball; Glenn A. Burley.; L. Chaker; B. C. Hawkins; James R. Williams; Paul A. Keller; Stephen G. Pyne. Structural Reassignment of the Mono- and Bis-Addition Products from the Addition Reactions of N-(Diphenylmethylene)glycinate Esters to [60]Fullerene under Bingel Conditions. J. Org. Chem. 2005, 70, 8572-8574.

Gerhard Bringmann; Anne J. Price Mortimer; Paul A. Keller; James Garner; Mary J. Gresser; Mattias Breuning. Modern Concepts for the Atropselective Synthesis of Axially Chiral Biaryls. Angew. Chem. 2005, 44, 5384-5427.

Searchable Publication List.

Current Students
 

PhD

Stephen Bailey - New chiral diphosphine and diarsine ligands for metal catalysed stereoselective reactions

Alireza Shakoori Ghasabi - Cascade reactions of indigo

Aaron Gregson - Design and Synthesis of Chiral Phosphine-based Ligands for the Stereoselective Synthesis of Sterically Hindered Systems

Screenu Jennepalli - Design and Synthesis of Multifunctional Fullerenyl Amino Acids

Yueting Lu - The design and synthesis of anti-HIV drugs

Ashraf Abdel-Megeed - Design and Synthesis of Chiral Nitrogen-based Ligands for the Stereoselective Synthesis of Sterically Hindered Systems

Viet Phuong Nguyen - Computational chemistry studies towards finding new medicinal chemistry leads for chikungunya virus and dengue fever

Ari Nugraha - Anti-infective Agents from Indonesian Natural Product

Adel Rashad - Drug Design Targeting the Chikungunya Virus

Alexander Sele - Design and Synthesis of anti-HIV-1 Drugs

Akash Sharma - Design and Synthesis of Potential HIV Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors

Andrew Stevens - Drug Design Targeting Dengue

Pam Sumner - Radiolabelled Growth Factor RTK Inhibitors as Antitumour Agents

Phurpa Wangchuk (with Prof. Stephen Pyne) - Bhutanese Natural Products - Value adding Traditional Medicines

Mel Waterman (with Prof. Sharon Robinson) - Antarctic Moss as Sentenials for Climate Change

Masters students

Mohamed Mostafa - The stereoselective synthesis of chiral biaryl natural products

Honours students

Matt Kennedy (BMedChem Hons) - Chiral synthesis from late stage chiral intermediates

Ivonne Lichtenberg (BSc Hons) - Radiolabelled markers for the early detection of Parkinson's disease

Suggested Topics for Future Students

 
Abbreviated CV
 

Qualification

PhD Univeristy of New South Wales (1991)
BSc(Hons) University of New South Wales (1985)

Positions Held

Director - Centre for Medicinal Chemistry

Alexander von Humboldt Post-Doctoral Fellow (1992-94 and 2001).

Current Funding

ARC Centre for Excellence
Australia-India Grant
Industry
ARC Discovery