People
Group Leader
Tamás Martinek
Tamás Martinek is the head of the Department of Medical Chemistry, University of Szeged. He received his MSc in Chemistry 1996 then he undertook a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences under the supervision of Prof. Ferenc Fülöp, at the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry where he graduated in 2001. His research focused on beta peptide foldamers, their design, structural analysis, and function. He was promoted to Professor in 2014 when he received Doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences title, became the head of the Department of Pharmaceutical Analysis and between 2014-2018 he was the Vice-Rector for International & Public Relations at the University of Szeged. He was the director of the Interdisciplinary Centre of Excellence (2018-2020) and became the head of the Department of Medical Chemistry in 2019. He received funding from Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (2002-2005, 2007-2009); MTA Momentum Programme (2011-2016); Hungarian Research, Development and Innovation Office (2020-2024) and was the scientific coordinator and project manager of several GINOP (2016-2020) and H2020 (2015-2018) schemes.
Co-workers
Edit Wéber
Edit Wéber is an assistant professor working on the development of biomimetic compounds which can inhibit cancer-related protein-protein interactions. She graduated as a pharmacist at the University of Szeged in 2007. She completed her PhD in 2012, working on investigations of protein-ligand interactions. Edit performs structural studies with Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and is involved in method developments to optimize foldamers ligands.
Zsófia Hegedüs
Zsófia Hegedüs is a postdoctoral researcher investigating methods for developing peptidomimetic ligands against disease relevant protein-protein interactions. She received her PhD in 2017 working on beta peptide foldamers. Between 2017 and 2019 she worked as a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the University of Leeds with Andrew Wilson and Thomas A. Edwards on peptide-small molecule hybrid ligands targeting proteins. Her current interests lie in investigating allosteric mechanism in PPIs and developing in vitro evolution methods for non-natural ligands targeting challenging protein-protein interactions.
Ferenc Bogár
Ferenc is a senior researcher working in the field of molecular modeling using both classical and quantum-based computing methods. He graduated in physics from the University of Szeged in 1987. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1998 in the field of quantum mechanical modeling of extended molecular systems, and the electric conductivity of DNA. Since 2003, he has been worked in research groups of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences hosted by the Medical Chemistry Institute of the University. Since then, his work has focused on protein structure modeling and computational drug design. He is particularly interested in modeling the role of interfacial water structure in biomolecular processes.
Publications
Brigitta Bodnár
Éva Kovács-Bartus
Éva is a postdoctoral researcher working in the field of protein-protein interactions and system chemistry. She received a PharmD degree in 2012 and obtained her PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences in 2019 at the University of Szeged, where she was working on developing methods to target protein surfaces using short beta-peptide foldamers. Her research interests lie in system chemistry approaches, dynamic covalent chemistry and out-of equilibrium networks and their utilization to develop biomimetic systems.
Anasztázia Hetényi
Anasztázia is an associate professor investigating molecular recognition and self-organization in biomimetic systems: (i) Biomimetic degradation- and entrapment-free cell delivery systems and (ii) Resensitisation of antibiotic resistant bacteria via tailored anion transport. She graduated in 2001 as a Chemist. She obtained her PhD in 2006 in the field of Pharmacy at University of Szeged working with Prof. Ferenc Fülöp and Prof. Tamás Martinek on the investigation of dynamic process and self-organization by spectroscopic methods and molecular modelling.
Gábor Olajos
Dr Olajos Gábor is a postdoctoral research associate. He is part of the group since 2011 and has been working on multiple projects, with a main interest in molecular modeling, peptide design & synthesis, structural analysis and biophysical assays. His research focuses mostly on the structural and biological properties of peptides containing beta-amino acids, with his most recent topic being antimicrobial peptides. Currently he is working on protein-protein interaction mapping with the use of dynamic covalent libraries of chimera peptides.
PhD Students
Kaushik Nath Bhaumik
Kaushik is a final year PhD student funded by Stipendium Hungaricum Scholarship Program 2018/2019. He is working with host defence peptides (HDPs), investigating the sub-MIC effects on bacterial electrophysiology. He has completed Master of Pharmacy (M. Pharm.) - Pharmaceutical Chemistry specialization in 2015 and Bachelor of Pharmacy (B. Pharm.) in 2013 from Tripura University, India. For his master’s project, he worked with thiazine ring based heterocyclic compounds. After completing his master’s degree, he worked as Junior research Fellow at Translational Health Science and Technology Institute (THSTI), Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India for 2 years under Dr. Jonathan Pillai. His work was focused on nano particle drug delivery systems, lipid drug conjugates and drug implants related to tuberculosis therapy.
Attila Tököli
Attila obtained a PharmD degree in 2015 and currently works as an assistant research fellow. His research involves investigating foldameric fragments as minimal surface mimetic helices for fragment based peptidomimetic design. He also investigates single-stranded DNA-binding protein mimetics as potential antimicrobials. He is trained in bacterial protein expression, peptide synthesis and several biophysical methods.
Publications
Vencel Petrovicz
Vencel is a second-year PhD student at the Doctoral School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Szeged, where he is co-supervised by Dr. Zsófia Hegedüs and Prof. Tamás Martinek. Vencel graduated from University of Szeged in 2020 with a Masters Degree in Pharmacy, where he worked on the enzymatic resolution of cyclic secondary amines supervised by Prof. Enikő Forró. He is currently working on the development of intrinsically disordered β-amino acid modified protein-protein interaction inhibitors as well as on the construction of a DNA-encoded libraries.
Publications
Undergraduate Students
Bence Nagymihály
Máté Héthelyi
Máté is final year BSc student, studying molecular bionics. He works as a research assistant, focusing primarily on identifying targets with a therapeutic value on the S100 proteins. Secondarily he studies molecular dissipative systems with potential for chemical evolution. His primary role is to synthesize and purify the relevant proteins for these projects.