Medicines are typically comprised of flat, two‑dimensional foundation from natural chemistry, which are usually linked to one another by means of a carbon-carbon bond (C-C) or a carbon-nitrogen bond (C-N). Teacher Hansmann and his group are working to make three‑dimensional organic substances usable for drug advancement. Such active‑ingredient structures have the advantage of improving pharmacokinetic residential or commercial properties – for instance, by being more water‑soluble or more metabolically stable. The binding pockets of proteins, which are regularly the target of medications in the body, can also easily bind spatially intricate active‑ingredient particles. In pharmaceutical chemistry, there is for that reason excellent interest in integrating new three‑dimensional structural components into active ingredients in order to establish much more effective medicines.
This is where the SPIROPENT project comes in: the scientists in Professor Hansmann’s group will establish three‑dimensional core structures that can be applied in active‑ingredient molecules. To do so, they make use of what are referred to as spiro [2.2] pentanes. These are natural compounds in which two rings, each made up of 3 carbon atoms, are joined to one another by means of a shared main carbon atom. “We will analyse the synthesis of the new building blocks in information and explore their usage in pharmaceutical chemistry, with the aim of establishing novel molecular building blocks that might be used in modern-day medicines,” says Hansmann. His group had actually already developed the method required for this in 2025, releasing it in Science and patenting it. It makes it possible to place carbon atoms into natural core structures in a targeted way. Building on these findings, the SPIROPENT task will now produce a series of brand-new three‑dimensional structures.
About the individual
Professor Max Hansmann has been Teacher of Organic Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at TU Dortmund University because 2023. In 2019, he had accepted a visit as junior professor with tenure track at TU Dortmund University, and from 2020 he headed an Emmy Noether early‑career research group. In 2022, he got an ERC Starting Grant for the project CC‑CHARGED, under which he is investigating essentially new classes of compounds in organic chemistry.
Max Hansmann’s professorship
ERC Proof of Concept Grants 2026
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