Chromatically Orthogonal Building Blocks for the Next-Generation Opto-Chemical Tools and Photopharmaceuticals

Classical pharmaceuticals, such as antimicrobial agents or anti-cancer drugs, cannot be limited in their mode of action to exclusively act on their biological target often leading to side-effects.

Consequently, controlling bio-active compounds by the application of an external stimulus, such as light, would be the ideal solution.

Light is a traceless and very precise external trigger and can interact with a diverse set of photoactive molecular structural motifs inducing photochemical transformations.

Embedded into larger structures, the light-induced change in the photoactive unit can be translated onto the whole molecule and can thus be used to control its properties.

Following these principles, light has shown promising results to regulate isolated functions in both biological, biohybrid, and chemical settings.However, currently used synthetic molecules are usually insufficient in the difference between the active and the inactive form or cannot control reversibly.

Thus, in this project, we introduce a new class of photo-responsive molecules, that will show a large structural difference between the active and the inactive state by using chromatically orthogonal building blocks and with this overcoming the limitations of current photopharmaceuticals to develop the next generation smart medicine and opto-chemical tools.