Medicinal Chemistry is a multi-disciplinary field of study that utilizes synthetic organic chemistry in conjunction with developments in biochemistry, computational chemistry, molecular biology, and pharmacology to advance drug discovery. In our laboratory problems at the chemistry-life sciences interface are addressed. A large part of our work concentrates on the development of small molecule modulators of new (i.e., yet unexplored) targets. These modulators can be both enabling chemical tools to interrogate biology or therapeutically useful compounds. From a chemical point of view, much of our work is centred on the chemical synthesis of novel nucleoside and sphingolipid analogues. Our research interest also includes carbohydrate, phosphonate and bioconjugate chemistry. Several of the running projects deal with the design of new lead structures for the treatment of infectious diseases with unmet medical needs (e.g. malaria and TB).