
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
- The design and synthesis of chiral ligands for metal catalysed reactions - chiral diamines, diphosphines and diarsines.
- Fullerenyl amino acid oligomers as energy harvestors.
- Cascade reactions of indigos. One and two step synthesis of wienol heterocycles.
Medicinal Chemistry
- The design and synthesis of anti-viral drug-targets include HIV, dengue fever and the chikungunya virus.
- New anti-bacterial agents targeting multidrug resistant microbes (c. difficile, VRE, MRSA).
- The synthesis of radiolabelled markers for the early detection of Parkinson's disease.
Natural Product Chemistry
- Antarctic moss as proxies for climate change.
- Indonesian ephiphytes.
- The colours of Australia.
- 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.
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
SEMINAR NOTICES
Speaker: Dr. Deanna M. D'Alessandro
School of Chemistry, University of Sydney
Title: Redox-active Metal-Organic Frameworks and Porous Coordinating Polymers
Date: Tuesday 28th May, 2013
Time: 12.30 - 1.30 p.m.
Venue: 18.108

