Dr. Dorothée Weikert
Department Chemie und Pharmazie
Group Leader (Medicinal Chemistry)
Nikolaus-Fiebiger-Str. 10
91058 Erlangen
Tel.: (+49)-(0)9131/85-65565
Biography
Dr. Dorothée Weikert (*21.03.1987) studied pharmacy at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität (FAU) Erlangen-Nürnberg. After completing the pre-registration training at Merck KGaA in Darmstadt and a local pharmacy, she obtained her licence to practice as a pharmacist at the end of 2011. In 2012, she joined the groups of Prof. Dr. Kristina Friedland and Prof. Dr. Peter Gmeiner at the FAU in Erlangen to pursue her doctoral studies. In her project, she was mainly concerned with the chemical synthesis and in vitro evaluation of G protein-biased dopamine receptor agonists. For her thesis entitled “Synthesis and Biological Evaluation of Functionally Selective Dopamine D2/D3 Receptor Ligands” (summa cum laude), she was awarded the Research Prize of the Gustav Adolf und Erika Dornhecker-Stiftung in 2015. In 2014, Dorothée spent three months as a visiting researcher in the laboratory of Prof. Dr. Michel Bouvier, at the IRIC (Université de Montréal) in Canada. There, she got fascinated by BRET biosensors, powerful tools for studying protein-protein interactions and GPCR signal transduction. From 2015 to 2016, she was a postdoc in the laboratory of Prof. Dr. Peter Gmeiner, before she joined the lab of Prof. Dr. Brian Kobilka at Stanford University (USA) as a visiting research scholar to extend her knowledge about the biochemistry and purification of GPCRs. Since her return to Erlangen at the end of 2016, Dorothée has worked as a group leader in the field of GPCR signal transduction and as a principal investigator for the DFG-funded research training group GRK1910, Medicinal Chemistry of Selective GPCR Ligands (2017-2023).
Dorothée’s current research integrates in vitro functional characterization with ligand affinity profiling, diagnostic receptor mutagenesis, and high-resolution structural studies via cryo-EM to dissect crucial protein/ligand and protein/protein interactions in GPCRs, with a particular focus on GPCR dimerization. Her group develops target-specific molecular tools such as fluorescent probes and bivalent ligands, and pairs them with tailored functional test systems (e.g., location-specific binding assays) to elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying receptor function. The goal of her group is to translate these mechanistic insights into novel targeting strategies and drug leads for disease-relevant GPCRs.