Profile Details

Create Project

★★★★★

☆☆☆☆☆

USD 50 /hr

★★★★★

☆☆☆☆☆

Hire Dr. Sebastian A.

Netherlands

USD 50 /hr

Chemical biologist with 10+ years of experience across the field. Keen to contribute to a broad variety of projects.

Profile Summary

I am a seasoned scientist with experience across the fields of chemical biology and drug discovery. The basis of my science is organic chemistry and I have spent several years performing structure guided design and synthesis of molecules for drug discovery. This experience is augmented with a wide variety of biochemistry, biophysics and molecular biology techniques. Past Research Work During my postdoctoral work at Imperial College in the group of Prof. Ed Tate, I worked on a drug discovery project involving a transmembrane enzyme. I led a small team from high throughput screen output to a candidate with in-vivo applicability. This included hit confirmation and selection, structure guided compound design, performing and optimising biochemical assays, setting up and performing cellular assays and PK studies up to in vivo dosing. This work also included me spearheading the development our cellular assay kit using CRISPR/Cas gene editing. I have also successfully raised >300k worth of academic research funding for this project. In my PhD I studied molecular glues for 14-3-3 protein-protein interactions in the group of Prof Christian Ottmann and Prof. Luc Brunsveld. This work included design and synthesis of novel molecular glue compounds. I wanted to expand my activities in this area to include semi-synthesis on a class of natural products call Fusicoccins. This led me to perform a secondment in the group of Prof. Nobuo Kato at Osaka University, the absolute leader in the field. To study the effect of my compounds, I expanded my skillset to include a broad range of assays such as FP, SPR, ITC, MST and X-ray crystallography. I managed to generate and characterise the most potent 14-3-3 molecular glue reported to date, and set up a method to characterise three body binding events such as a molecular glue and two proteins. Current Research Work I am currently setting up a completely new research project from scratch in the field of metabolic oligosaccheride engineering applied to wastewater treatment. This is a challenging project with real world application in which I am attempting to unravel the function of sialic acids in aerobic granular sludge wastewater treatment plants. This involves the synthesis glycan probes for metabolic labelling and applying this methodology to the extracellular polymeric substance of Candidatus Accumulibacter cultures in liter scale bioreactors.

Subject Matter Expertise

• ★ Chemical Biology
• ★ Drug Discovery
• ☆ Analytical Chemistry
• ☆ Crystallography
• ☆ X-Ray Crystallography
• ☆ Organic Chemistry
• ☆ Retrosynthesis
• ☆ Peptide Synthesis
• ☆ Biochemistry
• ☆ Biochemical Assays
• ☆ Structural Biology
• ☆ Enzyme Activity Assays
• ☆ Binding Assays
• ☆ Molecular Biology
• ☆ PCR
• ☆ Cell Biology
• ☆ Cell-Based Assays
• ☆ Biotechnology & Bioengineering
• ☆ Recombinant Protein Expression
• ☆ Cell Culture
• ☆ Biomolecular Engineering
• ☆ Gene Editing/CRISPR
• ☆ Blotting
• ☆ Medicinal Chemistry

Services

• Writing
• Research
• Consulting

Writing Technical Writing

Research Fact Checking, Scientific and Technical Research, Systematic Literature Review

Consulting Scientific and Technical Consulting

Work Experience

Postdoctoral Researcher

Delft University of Technology

March 2023 - Present

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Imperial College London

October 2019 - February 2023

Visiting PhD-student

Osaka University

October 2017 - February 2018

Synthetic Organic Chemist

AstraZeneca

September 2014 - March 2015

Education

Ph.D in Chemical Biology

Eindhoven University of Technology

February 2015 - May 2019

MSc in Biomedical Engineering

Eindhoven University of Technology

September 2012 - February 2015

BSc in Chemical Engineering

Eindhoven University of Technology

September 2009 - September 2013

Certifications

• Certification details not provided.

Publications

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Claire E. Coupland, Sebastian A. Andrei, T. Bertie Ansell, Loic Carrique, Pramod Kumar, Lea Sefer, Rebekka A. Schwab, Eamon F.X. Byrne, Els Pardon, Jan Steyaert, et al.(2021). Structure, mechanism, and inhibition of Hedgehog acyltransferase . Molecular Cell. 81. (24). p. 5025--5038.e10. Elsevier {BV}

Photochemical Probe Identification of a Small‐Molecule Inhibitor Binding Site in Hedgehog Acyltransferase (HHAT)** <head> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="0;URL=/servlet/useragent"> </head> . Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

Photochemical Probe Identification of a Small‐Molecule Inhibitor Binding Site in Hedgehog Acyltransferase (HHAT)** <head> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="0;URL=/servlet/useragent"> </head> . Angewandte Chemie.

Francesco Bosica, Sebastian A. Andrei, Jo&#227;o Filipe Neves, Peter Brandt, Anders Gunnarsson, Isabelle Landrieu, Christian Ottmann, Gavin O&#39;Mahony(2020). Design of Drug‐Like Protein–Protein Interaction Stabilizers Guided By Chelation‐Controlled Bioactive Conformation Stabilization . Chemistry – A European Journal. 26. (31). p. 7131--7139. Wiley

Alwin M. Hartman, Walid A. M. Elgaher, Nathalie Hertrich, Sebastian A. Andrei, Christian Ottmann, Anna K. H. Hirsch(2020). Discovery of Small-Molecule Stabilizers of 14-3-3 Protein–Protein Interactions via Dynamic Combinatorial Chemistry . ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters. 11. (5). p. 1041--1046. American Chemical Society ({ACS})

Sebastian A. Andrei, Vito Thijssen, Luc Brunsveld, Christian Ottmann, Lech-Gustav Milroy(2019). A study on the effect of synthetic α-to-β3-amino acid mutations on the binding of phosphopeptides to 14-3-3 proteins . Chemical Communications. Royal Society of Chemistry ({RSC})

Pim J. de Vink, Sebastian A. Andrei, Yusuke Higuchi, Christian Ottmann, Lech-Gustav Milroy, Luc Brunsveld(2019). Cooperativity basis for small-molecule stabilization of protein–protein interactions . Chemical Science. Royal Society of Chemistry ({RSC})

Sebastian A. Andrei, Femke A. Meijer, Jo&#227;o Filipe Neves, Luc Brunsveld, Isabelle Landrieu, Christian Ottmann, Lech-Gustav Milroy(2018). Inhibition of 14-3-3/Tau by Hybrid Small-Molecule Peptides Operating via Two Different Binding Modes . ACS Chemical Neuroscience. 9. (11). p. 2639--2654. American Chemical Society ({ACS})

Sebastian A. Andrei, Pim de Vink, Eline Sijbesma, Ling Han, Luc Brunsveld, Nobuo Kato, Christian Ottmann, Yusuke Higuchi (2018). Rationally Designed Semisynthetic Natural Product Analogues for Stabilization of 14‐3‐3 Protein–Protein Interactions . Angewandte Chemie.

Sebastian A. Andrei, Pim de Vink, Eline Sijbesma, Ling Han, Luc Brunsveld, Nobuo Kato, Christian Ottmann, Yusuke Higuchi (2018). Rationally Designed Semisynthetic Natural Product Analogues for Stabilization of 14‐3‐3 Protein–Protein Interactions . Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

Scheepstra, M., Andrei, S.A., Unver, M.Y., Hirsch, A.K.H., Leysen, S., Ottmann, C., Brunsveld, L., Milroy, L.-G.(2017). Designed Spiroketal Protein Modulation . Angewandte Chemie - International Edition. 56. (20). p. 5480-5484.

Scheepstra, M., Andrei, S.A., De Vries, R.M.J.M., Meijer, F.A., Ma, J.-N., Burstein, E.S., Olsson, R., Ottmann, C., Milroy, L.-G., Brunsveld, L.(2017). Ligand Dependent Switch from RXR Homo- to RXR-NURR1 Heterodimerization . ACS Chemical Neuroscience. 8. (9). p. 2065-2077.

Doveston, R.G., Kuusk, A., Andrei, S.A., Leysen, S., Cao, Q., Castaldi, M.P., Hendricks, A., Brunsveld, L., Chen, H., Boyd, H., et al.(2017). Small-molecule stabilization of the p53 – 14-3-3 protein-protein interaction . FEBS Letters. 591. (16). p. 2449-2457.

Andrei, S.A., Sijbesma, E., Hann, M., Davis, J., O’Mahony, G., Perry, M.W.D., Karawajczyk, A., Eickhoff, J., Brunsveld, L., Doveston, R.G., et al.(2017). Stabilization of protein-protein interactions in drug discovery . Expert Opinion on Drug Discovery. 12. (9). p. 925-940.

OTHER

Claire E. Coupland, Sebastian A. Andrei, T. Bertie Ansell, Loic Carrique, Pramod Kumar, Lea Sefer, Rebekka A Schwab, Eamon F.X. Byrne, Els Pardon, Jan Steyaert, et al.(2021). Structure and Mechanism of Hedgehog Acyl Transferase . Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Thomas Lanyon-Hogg, Markus Ritzefeld, Leran Zhang, Balazs Pogranyi, Milon Mondal, Lea Sefer, Callum D. Johnston, Claire E. Coupland, Sebastian A. Andrei, Joshua Newington, et al.(2020). Photochemical probe identification of the small-molecule binding site in a mammalian membrane-bound O-acyltransferase . Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory