Senior Spectroscopist : Dr Greg Pierens

Address:
Centre for Magnetic Resonance
Level 2, Gehrmann Laboratories
Research Road
The University of Queensland
Brisbane. QLD. 4072
E-mail address: Greg Pierens
Telephone: +61-7-3346 6429
Fax: +61-7-3365 3833
Home Page: Greg Pierens

Education Profile:
B.Sc.(Hons), The University of Sydney, 1986 (Organic Chemistry Honours (1st class)
Ph.D., The University of Sydney, 1990 ('Multiple quantum NMR spectroscopy of molecules aligned in liquid crystalline solution')

Career Profile:
1990-93: Postdoctoral Research Associated (funded by Amoco Production Company) Herchel Smith Laboratory for Medicinal Chemistry, The University of Cambridge, UK

• Application of NMR spectroscopy to the oil industry.

1993-1994: Postdoctoral Research Associate (funded by NSERC Canada), Department of Chemistry, Simon Fraser University, Canada

• NMR studies of apolipoproteins

1994-1997: Lecturer (Organic Chemistry), Faculty of Science and Technology, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia

• NMR of biologically important molecules

1997-2007: Senior Research Fellow (NMR Spectroscopy) and Manager of the NMR facility Natural Product Discovery (NPD) (funded and in collaboration with AstraZeneca), Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia

• Natural product structure elucidation
• High throughput NMR

Research Interests:

Greg has been involved in the applications of NMR to a broad range of research fields, primarily in the use of NMR spectroscopy to the chemical and biological sciences. NMR spectroscopy has proven itself to be an invaluable research tool in a wide range of fundamental research areas from the physical to the biomedical sciences.

Greg Pierens' research interests are in the following areas:

• Application of high resolution NMR to small organic molecules
• Application of NMR to drug discovery and drug optimization
• Biomolecular NMR
• Automated and high through-put NMR.
  

Recent publications (2001-):

• Gregory K. PIERENS, Anthony R. Carroll, Rohan A. Davis, Meredith E. Palframan, Ronald J. Quinn, Determination of analyte concentration using the residual solvent resonance in 1H NMR spectroscopy, Journal of Natural Products 71(5), 810-813, 2008
• Wendy A. Loughlin, Gregory K. PIERENS, Maria J. Petersson, Luke C. Henderson, and Peter C. Healy, (2008) Evaluation of novel hyphodermin derivatives as glycogen phosphorylase a inhibitors, Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry, 16(11), 6172-6178.
• Ronald J. Quinn, Anthony R. Carroll, Ngoc B. Pham, Paul Baron, Meredith E. Palframan, Lekha Suraweera, Gregory K. PIERENS, Sorel Muresan, (2008), Developing a Drug-like Natural Product Library, Journal of Natural Products, 71(3), 464-468.
• Davis, R.A., PIERENS, G.K. and Parson, P.G. (2007). Synthesis and spectroscopic characterisation of a combinatorial library based on the fungal natural product 3-chloro-4-hydroxyphenylacetamide. Magnetic Resonance in Chemistry 45(5): 442-445.
• Davis, R.A. and PIERENS, G.K. (2006). ¹H and ¹³C NMR assignments for two new xanthones from the endophytic fungus Xylaria sp. FRR 5657. Magnetic Resonance in Chemistry 44(10): 966-968.
• PIERENS, G.K., Palframan, M.E., Tranter, C.J., Carroll, A.R. and Quinn, R.J. (2005). A robust clustering approach for NMR spectra of natural product extracts. Magnetic Resonance in Chemistry43(5): 359-365.
• Rochfort, S.J., Towerzey, L., Carroll, A., King, G., Michael, A., PIERENS, G., Rali, T., Redburn, J., Whitmore, J. and Quinn, R.J. (2005). Latifolians A and B, Novel JNK3 kinase inhibitors from the Papua New Guinean plant Gnetum latifolium. Journal of Natural Products 68(7): 1080-1082.
• Grice, I.D., Garhnam, B., PIERENS, G., Rogers, K., Tindal, D. and Griffiths, L.R. (2003). Isolation of two phenylethanoid glycosides from Eremophila gilesii. Journal of Ethnopharmacology 86(1): 123-125.
• Ramadan, S.A., Field, L.D. and PIERENS, G.K. (2003). Multiple quantum nuclear magnetic resonance spectra of partially oriented styrene in a nematic phase. Molecular Physics 101 (12): 1813-1818.
• Carroll, A.R., PIERENS, G.K., Fechner, G., de Leone, P., Ngo, A., Simpson, M., Hyde, E., Hooper, J.N.A., Bostroem, S-L., Musil, D. and Quinn, R.J. (2002). Dysinosin A: A novel inhibitor of factor VIIa and thrombin from a new genus and species of Australian sponge of the family Dysideidae. Journal of the American Chemical Society 124(45): 13340-13341.
• Healy, P.C., Loughlin, W.A., McCleary, M.A, PIERENS, G.K. and Rowen, C.C. (2002). Structural studies on sulfonylbicyclo[n.2.0]alkan-1-ols. Journal of Physical Organic Chemistry15: 773-741.
• Field, L.D., Ramadan, S.A. and PIERENS, G.K. (2002). Multiple-quantum NMR of spectra of parially oriented indene: a new approach to estimating order in a nematic phase. Journal of Magnetic Resonance 156: 64-71.
• Volter, K.E., Embrey, K.J., PIERENS, G.K. and Quinn, RL.J. (2001). A study of the binding requirements of calyculin A and dephosphonocalyculin A with PP1, development of a molecular recognition model for the binding interactions of the odaeaic acid class of compounds with PP1. European Journal of Pharmacological Science 12(3): 181-194.