2025 Hector Medal: Designing better cancer drugs with knowledge gained from fundamental research
Professor Christian Hartinger FRSNZ, of Waipapa Taumata Rau – the University of Auckland, has been awarded the Hector Medal for fundamental research at the interface of chemistry and biology that has advanced our understanding of the interactions between metal complexes and biomolecules such as proteins, with potential applications in medicine and industry.
Most synthetic metal complexes used in medicine form bonds indiscriminately with proteins and other biomolecules. Christian’s innovative research has explored the interactions between metal complexes and biomolecules, enabling identification of the specific protein targets of metal-based drugs.
Using the fundamental knowledge gained, his team develops novel metal-based chemotherapy agents to selectively kill cancer cells by targeting key proteins. These metal-based anticancer agents can have multiple biological targets, and Christian’s group designs such compounds with the aim of increasing effectiveness and reducing drug resistance.
Christian grew up in a small village in Austria and enrolled at the University of Vienna with the plan to teach chemistry, mathematics, and history.
He soon switched his focus to chemistry.
“My research group is interested in a variety of topics related to the field of (bio)inorganic chemistry. The protein–metal complex interaction area is an important one, but we are also interested in supramolecular chemistry and bioanalytical chemistry, with a focus on high resolution mass spectrometry, which offers opportunities I am excited about,” Christian says.
“It has always fascinated me how simple metal complexes, such as cisplatin, can be such effective anticancer agents, how metal complexes reach their molecular targets, and how they interact with their targets.”
About 10 years ago, his team reported a compound class that shows high selectivity for a single protein – plectin.
“The compound class is, to the best of my knowledge, still the only one with a confirmed and specific target. This raised the question – why this compound and not the many others? This eventually led us to challenge the understanding of what drives metal complex–protein interactions which had often been oversimplified, as it turns out,” Christian says.
“With our metal complex–protein interaction investigations, we are on a good trajectory to actually define the main driving forces that determine the site of covalent bond formation.”
“This is very exciting and will hopefully allow us in the end to design metal complexes that interact with amino acids selectively on protein surfaces.”
To do these studies, Christian’s team will require access to high-end instrumentation.
“The scientific community in New Zealand would be better served if we had access to cross-institution facilities of a calibre many other countries have.”
The other aspect where New Zealand falls short is in valuing and funding fundamental research, Christian says.
“We celebrate when researchers make fundamental discoveries that eventually lead to applications, but we need to make these discoveries first.”
“As researchers, we know that fundamental research can be a long process, and it’s not helpful if we invest in an idea for a few years and then the continuity of such projects is interrupted because of a lack of funding. Moreover, we lose the expertise of people working on projects.”
Christian says that being awarded the Hector Medal is a “huge honour”.
“If anybody had told me when I started my journey 30ish years ago as an undergraduate at the University of Vienna that I would be listed as an award recipient, together with researchers I consider role models, I wouldn’t have believed it was possible. I hope I can be an inspiration to some of the aspiring researchers in New Zealand.”
“I am very grateful to my family, my wife and kids, who moved with me around the globe to live my dream, to be able to do research in a magnificent country like New Zealand.”
“However, the Medal is not about me – it’s a testament to the work my students, postdocs, and collaborators have done over the years, and I am grateful for all their contributions.”
“Scientific research is not a one-man show, it requires so many puzzle pieces to come together to paint a complete picture, in particular for research at the interface of different disciplines.”
“Students often don’t recognise how essential every seemingly small step is to bring us closer to big discoveries.”
Hector Medal:
Awarded to a researcher for outstanding work which has advanced the chemical, physical, mathematical, or information sciences.
Citation:
To Christian Hartinger for influential contributions at the interface between inorganic chemistry and biology that impact metallodrug discovery and provide fundamental understanding of metal complex-protein interactions.