Pandemics and Alertness member WG2 (Fighting the virus), LINXS Fellow

Institute of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Department of Pharmacy, Philipps University Marburg, Marburg, Germany.

Torsten Steinmetzer studied biochemistry at the University of Halle, where he obtained a Ph.D. in 1991. After a two-year postdoctoral stay at BRI in Montreal (Canada), he returned to the University of Jena in Germany as scientific assistant and finished his Habilitation on the development of synthetic thrombin inhibitors in 2003. From 1999 until 2007, he worked in industry for two biotechnology companies in Jena. As head of chemistry, he was responsible for the development of various serine protease inhibitors. In 2007, he was appointed as Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at Philipps University Marburg. His group works in the field of medicinal chemistry and has a special focus on the structure-based development, synthesis and characterization of serine protease inhibitors. He developed numerous potent inhibitors of various trypsin-like serine proteases (thrombin, plasmin, matriptase, urokinase, and TMPRSS2), of NS2B-NS3 proteases of flaviviruses, and of furin-like proprotein convertases. As host protease, furin is responsible for the activation of glycoproteins of numerous highly pathogenic viruses including SARS-CoV-2, H5N1 and H7N1 influenza viruses, of all flaviviruses, HIV, mumps and measles viruses, etc. Together with cooperation partners and in his own group, the structure of several protease/inhibitor-complexes was determined. His work on synthetic serine protease inhibitors has led to 15 granted patents.