Mercator fellow visit: Prof. Francisco Goycoolea from University of Murcia, Spain, visits us as DFG Codeχ Mercator fellow.

For three weeks, our colleague Prof. Francisco Goycoolea has been visiting us to continue our collaborative project in the framework of the DFG Priority Programme “Codeχ – The Code of Chito-Protein Interactions”. After his studies in Mexico and the UK, and after research positions in Mexico and Spain, Francisco was Junior Professor at the University of Münster in the framework of the Indo-German International Research Training Group on Molecular and Cellular Glyco-Sciences before becoming Full Professor at Leeds University in the UK and then Professor “Beatriz Galindo” (equivalent to an Alexander von Humboldt Professorship in Germany) at University of Murcia in Spain. Francisco is one of the most highly reputed chitosan researchers in the world, focusing on the physico-chemistry and nanoformulation of chitosans, e.g. for nasal or pulmonary drug delivery. As a Codeχ Mercator fellow, he has initiated a project on chitosan-mucin interactions, in collaboration with Dr. Ehab El Awaad from Prof. Hans Merzendorfer’s group at the University of Siegen, Dr. Martina Delbianco from the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam, and our group. On the last day of his visit, he and Prof. Bruno Moerschbacher visited the Siegen team to witness the first quantitative measurements of his purified mucins with fully defined chitosan oligosaccharides synthesized in Potsdam, using the novel GCI technology which Ehab has established in Siegen. An exciting visit, with excellent presentations from the Siegen group, and with highly promising GCI results from Ehab!