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.