Beat Ernst, Professor of Molecular Pharmacy, Pharmacenter, University of Basel, Switzerland.
Professor Ernst studied chemistry at the ETH Zürich, where he also completed his Ph.D. supervised by Proff. Oskar Jeger and Camille Ganter. He spent the following two years as a post-doctoral associate at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, in the research group of Prof. Robert E. Ireland. In 1981, he joined Ciba-Geigy’s Central Research Laboratories in Basel. After his promotion to section head Carbohydrate Chemistry and Biology in 1992, he initiated the Selectin program. In 1997, he moved to Transplantation Research within Novartis Pharma AG, which had been formed through the merger between Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz.
Beat Ernst’s research interests are at the interface between carbohydrate chemistry and glycobiology, with a particular focus on the synthesis of glycomimetics and their pharmacological profiling. His research on one hand aims at understanding the conformational and structural requirements for biological activity of glycomimetics, and on the other hand, in collaboration with academic and industrial groups, he explores the therapeutic potential of such compounds in disease models, and in one case, in the clinic (Rivipansel, currently in clinical phase III for the treatment of sickle cell disease) with the ultimate goal to discover new therapeutics.