Faculty

M.G. Finn 
Professor
Department of Chemistry
TSRI - 1998

Joint Appointments 
The Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology

Education 
Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1986

Research Focus 
Catalysis and Nanotechnology

Our work focuses on three areas: (1) the use of viruses as chemical building blocks for catalysts, materials, pharmaceuticals, and diagnostic agents; (2) the search for new catalysts of asymmetric organic transformations using combinatorial synthetic methods and novel mass spectrometry-based analytical techniques; and (3) the applications of highly reliable organic transformations to the discovery of biologically active compounds and functional materials. We engage in many collaborative projects with coworkers at TSRI and elsewhere, and our group is a highly interdisciplinary one.

Selected References 
Rodionov, V.O., Presolski, S., Gardinier, S., Lim, Y.-H., Finn, M.G. Benzimidazole and Related Ligands for Cu-Catalyzed Azide-Alkyne Cycloaddition. J. Am. Chem. Soc., in press (2007).

Kaltgrad, E., Sen Gupta, S., Punna, S., Huang, C.-Y., Chang, A., Wong, C.-H. Finn, M.G., Blixt, O. Anti-Carbohydrate Antibodies Elicited by Polyvalent Display on a Viral Scaffold. ChemBioChem 8:1455 (2007).

Díaz, D.D., Rajagopal, K., Strable, E., Schneider, J., Finn, M.G. Click Chemistry in a Supramolecular Environment: Stabilization of Organogels by Copper(I)-Catalyzed Azide-Alkyne [3+2] Cycloaddition. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 128:6056 (2006).

Sen Gupta, S., Kuzelka, J., Singh, P., Lewis, W.G., Manchester, M., Finn, M.G. Accelerated Bioorthogonal Conjugation: A Practical Method for the Ligation of Diverse Functional Molecules to a Polyvalent Virus Scaffold. Bioconj. Chem. 16:1572 (2005).