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Alexandre Hofer

@hofalex.bsky.social
862 followers 2.7K following 25 posts

R&D bioorganic chemist in biotech. High affinity to nucleotides and nucleic acids. All views my own.

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Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
There's a good case for windfall taxes in times when oil companies make huge unexpected profits, while energy costs for everyone are rising. ⬇️ Here's a petition from @taxjusticeuk.bsky.social worth signing just as Tax Minister Dan Tomlinson has replied and showed interest.
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Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · 07/02/2026
📣📣 Come and work with us! 📣📣 Interested in synthesising new molecules for Illumina's sequencing technologies of the future? Join our R&D team in Cambridge (UK)! #UKChemJobs #ChemJobs illumina.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/illumi...
illumina.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com
Scientist (Synthetic Chemistry)
What if the work you did every day could impact the lives of people you know? Or all of humanity? At Illumina, we are expanding access to genomic technology to realize health equity for billions of pe...
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Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · 07/02/2026
📣📣 Come and work with us! 📣📣 Interested in synthesising new molecules for Illumina's sequencing technologies of the future? Join our R&D team in Cambridge (UK)! #UKChemJobs #ChemJobs illumina.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/illumi...
illumina.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com
Scientist (Synthetic Chemistry)
What if the work you did every day could impact the lives of people you know? Or all of humanity? At Illumina, we are expanding access to genomic technology to realize health equity for billions of pe...
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Reposted by Alexandre Hofer
jeremy, yarn yoshi stan @cycl0pentadiene.bsky.social · 28/11/2025
(S)-cargot (R)-cargot
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Science X / Phys.org @sciencex.bsky.social · 28/11/2025
Light-activated metal complexes have been shown to disable antibiotic resistance enzymes in E. coli, significantly enhancing the effectiveness of existing antibiotics without harming human cells. doi.org/hbcxrb
phys.org
How phototherapy could reverse antibiotic resistance
Lars Stevens-Cullinane works in a dark room. But he's not processing negatives and printing photographs on light-sensitive paper; he's testing whether brief flashes of light can make drug-resistant bacteria sensitive to antibiotics.
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Sung Kim @sungkim.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
Even I’m not sure this will end well. Graphics courtesy of Dylan Patel of SemiAnalysis.
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Eachan Johnson @eachan.scbir.org · 06/10/2025
📆 Deadline: 14 November. 🩺 Doctoral Clinical Fellows programme (3-year PhD) 🤝 Exciting collaboration with the amazing @jeanninehess.bsky.social Curating bioactive chemical space in pathogenic bacteria using accumulation signatures across species ✍️ Apply here: www.crick.ac.uk/careers-stud...
crick.ac.uk
Johnson lab and Hess lab | Curating bioactive chemical space in pathogenic bacteria using accumulation signatures across species
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Jeannine Hess @jeanninehess.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
🧪 Excited to share our new work on reactive metallo-scaffolds (r-mS)! We combine metal complexes with chemoproteomics to discover new liganding sites across the proteome! Shout out to a great collaboration with GSK! Fantastic team effort 🫶🏻 chemrxiv.org/engage/chemr...
chemrxiv.org
Proteome-Wide Target Identification Using Reactive Metallo-Scaffolds (r-mS): A Platform for Metallodrug Discovery
Metal complexes offer unique opportunities as scaffolds in chemical biology and drug discovery, with tuneable geometry, modular coordination environments, and structural features not readily accessibl...
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Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · 27/07/2025
On the benefits of a 4-day work week: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
Biggest trial of four-day work week finds workers are happier and feel just as productive
Compressing five days of work into four can create stress, but the benefits outweigh the downsides, sprawling study shows.
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Jeannine Hess @jeanninehess.bsky.social · 24/07/2025
📣Preprint 📣 You want to degrade a protein in Gram-negatives? We have tackled this challenge! Detailed study of our Light-Activated Metal-Dependent Protein Degradation LAMP-D system in targeting and rescuing NDM-1 activity. What an amazing team effort 🫶🏻 doi.org/10.26434/che...
doi.org
Light-Activated Metal-dependent Protein Degradation (LAMP-D): A Heterobifunctional Ruthenium(II) Photosensitizer Targeting New Delhi Metallo-β-lactamase 1
The growth of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a significant global health threat, yet despite this alarming trend, antibiotic drug discovery has significantly slowed. Most compounds entering the cli...
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Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · 24/07/2025
Imagine a small molecule that degrades a target protein like PROTACs, but does so independently of any of the host cell's degradation machinery, so you can go and do targeted protein degradation in gram-negative bacteria: doi.org/10.26434/che...
Light-Activated Metal-Dependent Protein Degradation (LAMP-D)
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Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
#ChemSky
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Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
If you're looking to do a PhD in bioinorganic and medicinal chemistry in a wonderful research group at a world-leading institute, here's a great opportunity: www.crick.ac.uk/careers-stud... @jeanninehess.bsky.social
crick.ac.uk
Hess Lab | Metal-based Heterobifunctional Scaffolds to Capture Challenging Proteins
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Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · 01/01/2025
Happy New Year!
Two little snow-persons.
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Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · 01/01/2025
Great transition into the new year with a well-organised party...
A hand-written list of importand party stuff:
- myoosic
- party popos
- dansing
- gaims
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Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · 26/12/2024
A white Christmas for once...
Merry Xmas written in snow
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Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · 23/12/2024
Little copycats in the house...
Two blackboards with a drawing in the background, a blackboard with a child-made copy of the drawing.
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Brendan @chemscrapes.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
Collum #chemsky
A flash chromatography column....the bulb is the head of Gollum from lord of the rings.  It is spelled C-O-L-L-U-M (collum)
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Michael Booth @drmikebooth.bsky.social · 17/11/2024
Do not confuse... chemsky
molecule called arsole on the left, picture of elon musk on the right
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Frederik Haase @frederikhaase.bsky.social · 16/11/2024
Do not confuse...
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Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · 16/11/2024
Do not confuse...
stable aminal vs. stable animal
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Adam Sharp @adamcsharp.bsky.social · 14/11/2024
⚠Invalid Handel
You can't handel the truth! An illustration of composer George Frideric Handel
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Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · 03/10/2024
Thanks @cambridgeindy.bsky.social for publishing my view on closing the Mill Road Bridge for private vehicles.
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Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · 28/06/2024
"Prioritizing family life has earned me respect in my field — and my research has improved, too" www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
What it means to be a successful male academic
Prioritizing family life has earned me respect in my field — and my research has improved, too, says Dritjon Gruda. Prioritizing family life has earned me respect in my field — and my research has imp...
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Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · 11/05/2024
Quite faint in the middle of town, but one could clearly see the northern lights in Cambridge, UK.
Faint aurora borealis, visible even from central Cambridge UK.
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Derek Lowe @dereklowe.bsky.social · 14/03/2024
You wouldn’t think that formaldehyde is an actual cellular signaling molecule, would you? But here we are!
science.org
Formaldehyde, You Say?
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Keith Hornberger @krhornberger.bsky.social · 22/02/2024
This report on the CACHE competition is worth a read. It’s about as close as we’ve gotten to some open benchmarking of AI impact to the drug discovery process. I’d suggest a title change to “When Can AI Deliver the Drugs?” though. A few more thoughts👇 1/
nature.com
When can AI deliver the drug discovery hits?
The CACHE hit-finding competition highlights the potential of AI to identify small molecules that bind to hard-to-drug targets — and the long road ahead for these computational screening approaches. T...
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Christof Jäger @cmjaeger.bsky.social · 26/01/2024
Absolutely agree. And I only play the nice guy on here, but reality might be closer to this meme:
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Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · 23/01/2024
"Then they took the extra step, rarely realized in such papers [...], of actually synthesizing hundreds of the hit molecules and experimentally testing them against the real proteins. (Faint cheers can be heard echoing from the lab benches and fume hoods)." 😅
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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 21/01/2024
We should spend a massively less amount of time politically kneecapping our most globally competitive export industry that employs more than 2% of the entire US workforce
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Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · 21/01/2024
Towards a better society by limiting wealth accumulation? A great take on Ingrid Robeyns' Limitarianism: www.theguardian.com/books/2024/j...
theguardian.com
‘No one should have more than €10m’: the author of Limitarianism on why the super-rich need to...
Prof Ingrid Robeyns has spent a decade studying wealth and ethics and says that limits are essential if we want to eradicate poverty and protect social cohesion and the planet
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Keith Hornberger @krhornberger.bsky.social · 18/01/2024
Jensen Huang’s comments from JPM24 are now summarized in a Nvidia blog post. He doubles down on exactly the kinds of things that I’ve been cautioning are wildly optimistic. More below. 👇🏽 1/
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Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · 09/01/2024
"What I actually want is for sequencers to be as boring and simple as a qPCR machine." Nava Whiteford on the future of Sequencing aseq.substack.com/p/the-future...
aseq.substack.com
The Future of Sequencing
This article was originally published in Inside Precision Medicine. But I thought my original draft might be of interest to readers here. The first thing I imagine when asked to write about the future...
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Daniel Probst @skepteis.bsky.social · 08/01/2024
Happy new year......
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ErrantScience @errantscience.com · 05/01/2024
In the Venn diagram of results, my results never seem to overlap with sense
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Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · 01/01/2024
Happy New Year!
Christmas lights at Wimpole Estate
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Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · 28/12/2023
Merry Christmas!
Illuminated star with mist on a field on Wimpole estate
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Alexandre Hofer @hofalex.bsky.social · 18/12/2023
When you only have scientific magazines at hand for some arts and crafts with your daughter...
Sciencey arts and crafts
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