s.a.k.jongkees(at)vu.nl
Jongkees Research Group
About Us
The Jongkees group (Chemical Biology and Biotechnology) uses chemical and biological tools to conduct research at the interface of peptides, proteins and carbohydrates.
Research in our group is centred around genetic code reprogramming, bio-orthogonal chemistry, and high throughput in vitro peptide display. Using these cutting edge chemical and biochemical technologies, we aim to define a new class of ligands for interrogation and modulation of proteins, especially those involved in carbohydrate biology. These small de novo macrocyclic peptides decorated with non-canonical functional groups have exemplary affinity and selectivity, and are applicable across very diverse targets. Research in the group is focused on development of new methods for library modification, including new non-canonical amino acids to incorporate by ribosomal translation and new chemo-selective reactions for modification following translation, as well as application of these technologies to discover new chemical entities for biological studies and drug development. Our research involves synthetic organic chemistry of both building blocks and peptides, analytical studies of new reactions, optimisation of in vitro translation conditions, biochemical characterisation of interactions with proteins, and in vitro selection to discover new bioactive molecules.
If you are interested in this research, please do not hesitate to make contact.
Our group is a part of the department of Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences in the Amsterdam Institute of Molecular and Life Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU).
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All are welcome in this group
Check out this short video about a high school team's experience in our group as part of the U-talent program (@ Utrecht university). Really great work!
(in Dutch)
Latest news
06 Feb, 2023
Welcome to Raya Hana, joining for a Master's internship from the Drug Discovery Sciences program, and Isabel Houtkamp, a joint master's student from the Bioinformatics program.
18 Dec, 2022
Congratulations to Minglong, Ryoji, and Twan for their paper characterising a new cyclisation approach to use in mRNA display, and much thanks to our neighbours in Computational Molecular Toxicology for help with our first foray into MD simulations (and of course also to our virologist friends for compound testing)
12 Dec, 2022
Welcome to Juliette Engelberts, joining for a Master's internship joint with the group of Thom Sharp at the Leiden UMC
05 Sep, 2022
Welcome to Tom Vis, joining for a Bachelor's internship in Chemistry
Aug 4, 2022
Congratulations to Vito and Twan, as well as former students David and Julia (and thanks to collaborators in UU Virology and Mass Spectrometry) for their paper on anti-influenza peptides in ACS Chemical Biology:
Apr 01, 2022
Welcome to Cameron, joining for a Master's internship in Drug Discovery and Safety
Mar 24, 2022
Congratulations to Minglong and former student Miha for their paper on dehydroalanine modification by phosphines in OBC: https://doi.org/10.1039/D2OB00410K
Jan 31, 2022
Congratulations to Paddy and Ryoji for their review on ways to expand mRNA display in ChemBioChem, based on Paddy's writing assignment: https://doi.org/10.1002/cbic.202100685
Jan 10, 2022
Welcome to Paddy, joining for a short Master's internship in Drug Discovery and Safety
Apr 1, 2021
Welcome (back) to David, re-joining us for his Master's internship in Drug Innovation
Mar 1, 2021
We have a new home! The group has moved from Utrecht University to VU Amsterdam.
Feb 1, 2021
Welcome (back) to Stein, re-joining us for his Master's internship in Drug Innovation
Jan 1, 2021
Welcome (back) to Lin, re-joining us for her Master's internship in Drug Innovation
Sep 7, 2020
Welcome to Cerissa, joining us for her bachelor's research internship from the College of Pharmaceutical Sciences program
Sep 1, 2020
Welcome (back) to Ryoji, re-joining us to carry out his PhD on the NWO funded project about macrocyclic peptides to tune immune cell biology
Aug 25, 2020
Congratulation to Minglong and Vito, with their manuscript on initiation reprogramming now published online in early access at Angewandte Chemie, DOI 10.1002/anie.202003779
Apr 16, 2020
Funding received from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific research (NWO) in the form of a 'Klein-2' grant with Dr. Sandra van Vliet of VUMC, looking at "Tuning immune cell biology with macrocyclic glycopeptides"
Feb 2, 2020
Welcome to Lisa, joining us for her Bachelor's internship from the College of Pharmaceutical Sciences
Jan 6, 2020
Welcome to Lin, joining us for her Bachelor's internship from the College of Pharmaceutical Sciences
Dec 12, 2019
Funding received from National Centre for One Health to start an exciting collaborative project on "In-host adaptation in chronic fungal airway infections and development of new antifungals"
Dec 1, 2019
Welcome back to Rick, re-joining us for his Master's internship in Drug Innovation
Sep 1, 2019
Welcome to David, joining us for his Bachelor's internship from the Molecular Life Science program
Jul 30, 2019
Congratulations again to Leander, Minglong, Lieke, and Ryoji for their article being featured on the front cover of ACS Chemical Biology
https://pubs.acs.org/toc/acbcct/14/8
Jun 26, 2019
Congratulations to Leander Goldbach, Minglong Liu, Lieke van Gijzel, and Ryoji Yoshisada for their publication on peptide conformations and binding in ACS Chemical Biology https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acschembio.9b00290
Mar 27, 2019
Congratulations to Lemeng Chao for her review publication in Angewandte Chemie https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ange.201900055
Mar 7, 2019
Congratulations to former student Ryoji for winning third prize at the KNCV PAC symposium in Amsterdam for his poster presentation about his work in the group
Feb 4, 2019
Welcome to Rick, joining us for his Bachelors internship from the College of Pharmaceutical Sciences
Jan 21, 2019
Welcome to Julia, joining us for the minor internship of her Drug Innovation masters in a joint project with the virology department
Dec 1, 2018
Welcome to Miha, joining us for the major internship of his Drug Innovation masters
Oct 29, 2018
Welcome to Hao, joining us for a research project during his exchange here in Utrecht
Sep 4, 2018
Welcome to Lloyd, joining us for his Bachelors internship from the College of Pharmaceutical Sciences program
Jul 11, 2018
Welcome to Dejvid, joining us for a summer project
Feb 5, 2018
Welcome to Marinda, joining us for her Bachelors internship from the College of Pharmaceutical Sciences program
Dec 1, 2017
Welcome to Najoua, joining us for her Masters internship from the Drug Innovation program
Nov 15, 2017
Congratulations again to Ryoji and Lieke, with their article featured on the front cover of ChemBioChem https://doi.org/10.1002/cbic.201700601
Oct 26, 2017
Welcome to Wendy, joining us for an internship under the Erasmus+ programme from Glasgow
Oct 8, 2017
Congratulations to Ryoji and Lieke for having their paper on peptide studies and natural product mimicry accepted in ChemBioChem
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/cbic.201700457
Jun 1, 2017
Welcome back to Vito, joining us for a PhD after completing his masters at TU-Eindhoven.
May 1, 2017
Now funded by European Union Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship - a greatly appreciated source of support.
Apr 24, 2017
Welcome to Danique, joining us from the chemistry department for a short internship.
Mar 17, 2017
Paper on Rapid discovery of potent and selective glycosidase-inhibiting de novo peptides published in Cell Chemical Biology https://www.cell.com/cell-chemical-biology/fulltext/S2451-9456(17)30031-4
Feb 3, 2017
Welcome to Ryoji, joining us for an exchange year from Kyoto University.
Jan 30, 2017
Received Marie Curie grant, funding study on glycopeptide interactions with the immune recognition proteins called selectins.
Nov 26, 2016
Links section added.
Nov 1, 2016
Welcome to Avand, joining us for an internship from Leiden.
Oct 24, 2016
Paper on chemical glycosylation of macrocyclic peptide libraries accepted in Chemical Science
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2016/sc/c6sc04381j
Oct 10, 2016
Welcome to Minglong, starting his PhD.
Oct 5, 2016
Website finally live!