Tesfaye Serbessa
Associate Professor,
Natural Sciences
226
Pharmacy Building
Campus Box 930
Phone: (252)335-3438
Fax: (252)335-3697
E-mail: tserbessa@ecsu.edu
Bio
Education 2004-2005: Postdoctoral Training, Auburn University, Auburn, AL.
2000-2004: Ph.D. in Synthetic Organic/Medicinal Chemistry, Auburn University, Auburn,
AL.
1994-1996: M.S. in Inorganic Chemistry, Department of Chemistry Addis Ababa University,
Ethiopia.
1986-1990: B.S. in Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, Asmara University, Eritrea.
Research Interest My research interest is primarily the design, synthesis, and investigation
of the antiviral and antimalarial properties of modified nucleosides. Nucleosides
are the building blocks of nucleic acids: DNA and RNA. Nucleosides are also involved
in numerous cellular processes such as the energetics of metabolism (e.g ATP), catalysis
(as cofactors), signal transduction, and biochemical reactions. Because nucleosides
are ubiquitous in biological systems, structural modification of the natural nucleosides
is expected to yield derivatives with interesting biological properties (Anitviral,
Antitumor, antimalarial etc.). In fact, the majority of drugs used to treat viral
infections such as HBV, HIV, herpes etc. are modified nucleosides. In my lab, we design
and synthesize novel modified nucleosides in an effort to discover derivatives with
desirable antiviral and antimalarial properties.
Selected Publications
1. Bazile, Q.; Zhong; J.; Serbessa, T. An efficient synthesis of the 4'-epimer of
2-Fluoronoraristeromycin, Tetrahedron Lett., 2012, 53, 1435-1437.
2. Hinton, S.; Riddick, A.; Serbessa, T. “Deoxy Derivatives of 4'-Deoxy-5'-Noraristeromycin,
Tetrahedron Lett., 2012, 53, 1753-1755.
3. Henry Yu, Tesfaye Serbessa, N-6 Substituted Deoxygenated Derivatives of L-like
5'-Noraristeromycin, Bull. Chem. Soc. Ethiop., 2010, 24, 001-008.
4. Minmin Yang, Tesfaye Serbessa and Stewart W. Schneller The 3-Deaza and 7-Deaza
Derivatives of 5'-Amino-5'-deoxy-5'-noraristeromycins, Collect. Czech. Chem. Commun.,
2006, 7, 1122-1129
5. Atanu Roy, Tesfaye Serbessa, and Stewart W. Schneller, 3'-Fluoro-3'-Deoxy-5'-Noraristeromycin
Derivatives: Synthesis and Analysis, Bioorg. Med. Chem. 2006, 14, 4980-4986.