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Alexandre Hofer

@hofalex.bsky.social

830 followers 2.6K following 23 posts

R&D bioorganic chemist in biotech. High affinity to nucleotides and nucleic acids. Tries to find time again to record stuff (old things: https://on.soundcloud.com/Tgaoj) All views my own.

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Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · Nov 16

Do not confuse...

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Reposted by Alexandre Hofer

Eachan Johnson @eachanjohnson.bsky.social · 3d

📆 Deadline: 14 November.
🩺 Doctoral Clinical Fellows programme (3-year PhD)
🤝 Exciting collaboration with the amazing @jeanninehess.bsky.social
Curating bioactive chemical space in pathogenic bacteria using accumulation signatures across species
✍️ Apply here: www.crick.ac.uk/careers-stud...

Johnson lab and Hess lab | Curating bioactive chemical space in pathogenic bacteria using accumulation signatures across species

www.crick.ac.uk

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Reposted by Alexandre Hofer

Jeannine Hess @jeanninehess.bsky.social · 15d

🧪 Excited to share our new work on reactive metallo-scaffolds (r-mS)! We combine metal complexes with chemoproteomics to discover new liganding sites across the proteome! Shout out to a great collaboration with GSK! Fantastic team effort 🫶🏻 chemrxiv.org/engage/chemr...

Proteome-Wide Target Identification Using Reactive Metallo-Scaffolds (r-mS): A Platform for Metallodrug Discovery

Metal complexes offer unique opportunities as scaffolds in chemical biology and drug discovery, with tuneable geometry, modular coordination environments, and structural features not readily accessibl...

chemrxiv.org

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Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · Jul 27

On the benefits of a 4-day work week: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Biggest trial of four-day work week finds workers are happier and feel just as productive

Compressing five days of work into four can create stress, but the benefits outweigh the downsides, sprawling study shows.

www.nature.com

Reposted by Alexandre Hofer

Jeannine Hess @jeanninehess.bsky.social · Jul 24

📣Preprint 📣
You want to degrade a protein in Gram-negatives? We have tackled this challenge! Detailed study of our Light-Activated Metal-Dependent Protein Degradation LAMP-D system in targeting and rescuing NDM-1 activity. What an amazing team effort 🫶🏻 doi.org/10.26434/che...

Light-Activated Metal-dependent Protein Degradation (LAMP-D): A Heterobifunctional Ruthenium(II) Photosensitizer Targeting New Delhi Metallo-β-lactamase 1

The growth of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a significant global health threat, yet despite this alarming trend, antibiotic drug discovery has significantly slowed. Most compounds entering the cli...

doi.org

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Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · Jul 24

Imagine a small molecule that degrades a target protein like PROTACs, but does so independently of any of the host cell's degradation machinery, so you can go and do targeted protein degradation in gram-negative bacteria: doi.org/10.26434/che...

Light-Activated Metal-Dependent Protein Degradation (LAMP-D)

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Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · Mar 13

#ChemSky

Jeannine Hess @jeanninehess.bsky.social · Mar 13

🚨Less than a week left to apply (deadline 19/03/25) for this exciting fully funded 4 Year Phd position in my group.

Multidisciplinary project on the design of novel metallo-NBTIs including all the fun of chemistry and much more! Please RT!

Apply here: www.crick.ac.uk/careers-stud...

Hess Lab | Metal-based Heterobifunctional Scaffolds to Capture Challenging Proteins

www.crick.ac.uk

Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · Feb 27

If you're looking to do a PhD in bioinorganic and medicinal chemistry in a wonderful research group at a world-leading institute, here's a great opportunity:

www.crick.ac.uk/careers-stud...

@jeanninehess.bsky.social

Hess Lab | Metal-based Heterobifunctional Scaffolds to Capture Challenging Proteins

www.crick.ac.uk

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Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · Jan 1

Happy New Year!

Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · Jan 1

Great transition into the new year with a well-organised party...

A hand-written list of importand party stuff:
- myoosic
- party popos
- dansing
- gaims

Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · Dec 26

A white Christmas for once...

Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · Dec 23

Little copycats in the house...

Two blackboards with a drawing in the background, a blackboard with a child-made copy of the drawing.

Reposted by Alexandre Hofer

Brendan @chemscrapes.bsky.social · Nov 23

Collum

#chemsky

A flash chromatography column....the bulb is the head of Gollum from lord of the rings. It is spelled C-O-L-L-U-M (collum)

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Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · Nov 20

Absolutely! All the horse pictures got me confused.

Reposted by Alexandre Hofer

Michael Booth @drmikebooth.bsky.social · Nov 17

Do not confuse...

chemsky

molecule called arsole on the left, picture of elon musk on the right

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Reposted by Alexandre Hofer

Frederik Haase @frederikhaase.bsky.social · Nov 16

Do not confuse...

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Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · Nov 16

Do not confuse...

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Reposted by Alexandre Hofer

Adam Sharp @adamcsharp.bsky.social · Nov 14

⚠Invalid Handel

You can't handel the truth! An illustration of composer George Frideric Handel

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Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · Oct 3

Thanks @cambridgeindy.bsky.social for publishing my view on closing the Mill Road Bridge for private vehicles.

Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · Jun 28

"Prioritizing family life has earned me respect in my field — and my research has improved, too"

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

What it means to be a successful male academic

Prioritizing family life has earned me respect in my field — and my research has improved, too, says Dritjon Gruda. Prioritizing family life has earned me respect in my field — and my research has imp...

www.nature.com

Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · May 11

Quite faint in the middle of town, but one could clearly see the northern lights in Cambridge, UK.

Faint aurora borealis, visible even from central Cambridge UK.

Reposted by Alexandre Hofer

Derek Lowe @dereklowe.bsky.social · Mar 14

You wouldn’t think that formaldehyde is an actual cellular signaling molecule, would you? But here we are!

Formaldehyde, You Say?

www.science.org

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Reposted by Alexandre Hofer

Keith Hornberger @krhornberger.bsky.social · Feb 22

This report on the CACHE competition is worth a read. It’s about as close as we’ve gotten to some open benchmarking of AI impact to the drug discovery process.

I’d suggest a title change to “When Can AI Deliver the Drugs?” though. A few more thoughts👇 1/

When can AI deliver the drug discovery hits?

The CACHE hit-finding competition highlights the potential of AI to identify small molecules that bind to hard-to-drug targets — and the long road ahead for these computational screening approaches. T...

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Alexandre Hofer

Christof Jäger @cmjaeger.bsky.social · Jan 26

Absolutely agree. And I only play the nice guy on here, but reality might be closer to this meme:

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Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · Jan 23

"Then they took the extra step, rarely realized in such papers [...], of actually synthesizing hundreds of the hit molecules and experimentally testing them against the real proteins. (Faint cheers can be heard echoing from the lab benches and fume hoods)." 😅

Derek Lowe @dereklowe.bsky.social · Jan 22

Using AlphaFold protein models to screen against has been looking like not-so-great idea. But it might work better than you'd have thought: 🧪 Chemsky

www.science.org/content/blog...

Reposted by Alexandre Hofer

Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · Jan 21

We should spend a massively less amount of time politically kneecapping our most globally competitive export industry that employs more than 2% of the entire US workforce

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · Jan 21

Shocked at how high this is: "About one in 40 U.S. workers draws a paycheck from a college or university" www.wsj.com/us-news/educ...

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