Kübra Kaygisiz

Kübra Kaygisiz studied Chemistry at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz with a focus on polymer science and graduated as Master of Science in September 2019. During her master studies she spent 6 months in the group of Prof. Dr. Eiji Yashima at Nagoya University, Japan, for a research internship.

In 2019, she joined the group of Prof. Dr. Tanja Weil for her master thesis about photo-patterned peptide gradients. She continued her research as a Ph.D. candidate in the same group, starting in February 2020. During her Ph.D. studies, she also joined the group of Prof. Dr. Itaru Hamachi at Kyoto University in Japan for several months, which was recognized by a fellowship from the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Sciences (JSPS).

In her research, Kübra focuses on the design, synthesis, and characterization of nanoscopic self-assembled peptide nanofibers. By exploring their mesoscopic properties and macroscopic interactions with cells and viruses, she aims to unlock their immense potential for biomedical application, i.e., gene therapy.

Selected Publications

(1)  Kaygisiz, K.; Rauch-Wirth, L.; Dutta, A.; Yu, X.; Nagata, Y.; Bereau, T.; Münch, J.; Synatschke, C. V.; Weil, T. Data-Mining Unveils Structure-Property-Activity Correlation of Viral Infectivity Enhancing Self-Assembling Peptides. ChemRxiv 2023. https://doi.org/10.26434/CHEMRXIV-2023-HFQXB.

(2)  Kaygisiz, K.; Dutta, A.; Rauch-Wirth, L.; Synatschke, C. V; Münch, J.; Bereau, T.; Weil, T. Inverse Design of Viral Infectivity-Enhancing Peptide Fibrils from Continuous Protein-Vector Embeddings. ChemRxiv 2023. https://doi.org/10.26434/chemrxiv-2023-1kqm3.

(3)  Kaygisiz, K.; Ender, A. M.; Gačanin, J.; Kaczmarek, L. A.; Koutsouras, D. A.; Nalakath, A. N.; Winterwerber, P.; Mayer, F. J.; Räder, H.; Marszalek, T.; Blom, P. W. M.; Synatschke, C. V.; Weil, T. Photoinduced Amyloid Fibril Degradation for Controlled Cell Patterning. Macromol. Biosci. 2023, 23 (2), 2200294. https://doi.org/10.1002/mabi.202200294.

(4) Sieste, S.; Mack, T.; Lump, E.; Hayn, M.; Schütz, D.; Röcker, A.; Meier, C.; Kaygisiz, K.; Kirchhoff, F.; Knowles, T. P. J.; Ruggeri, F. S.; Synatschke, C. V.; Münch, J.; Weil, T. Supramolecular Peptide Nanofibrils with Optimized Sequences and Molecular Structures for Efficient Retroviral Transduction. Adv. Funct. Mater. 2021, 31 (17), 2009382. https://doi.org/10.1002/adfm.202009382.

(5)  Kaygisiz, K.; Synatschke, C. V. Materials Promoting Viral Gene Delivery. Biomater. Sci. 2020, 8 (22), 6113–6156. https://doi.org/10.1039/D0BM01367F.