S.U.N.Y. O.C.C. A.S., 1995.
S.U.N.Y. College of Environmental Science and Forestry B.S., magna cum laude 1998.
The University of Chicago, M.S., 2000 Ph.D., 2005.
The Scripps Research Institute, Post-Doc, 2005-2007.
California State University Long Beach, Assistant Professor, 2007-

Awards
Mayfield Award for Outstanding Faculty Member in College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, CSULB May 2010
Edith Barnard Memorial Award in Chemistry for Service to Others, The University of Chicago May 2005
Freud Departmental Citizenship Award, The University of Chicago May 2005
NIH Pre-doctoral Training Grant for Chemistry and Biology, National Institutes of Health 2000-2002
James Franck Fellowship, The University of Chicago 1999
Merck Award for Environmental Biochemistry, Merck & Co. Inc. 1998
Ernest Sondheimer Memorial Award 1998
John Meyer Environmental Chemistry Award 1997
Michael P. Schramm
Assistant Professor
Office: MLSC 335
Phone: (562)-985-1866
Email: michael.schramm@csulb.edu
Web: http://chemistry.csulb.edu/schramm/
Department: http://chemistry.csulb.edu/
 
News:
 
Katie Feher and Hai Hoang's work on "Embedding resorcinarene cavitands in lipid vesicles" has been accepted for publication in RCS's New Journal of Chemistry. (Feher, K. M., Hoang, H., Schramm, M. P. New J. Chem. 2012 full citation forthcoming)
Katie Feher, Cindy Pham, Nicole Mangabat, and Jeanice Rodriguez presented posters at the 2011 College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics Poster session on their work.
The National Cancer Institute awarded us a National Institutes of Health SCORE grant (SC2) for $433,500 over a 3 year period to work on "Selective Small Molecule Membrane Transport Using Cavitand Receptors."
Our first publication has been accepted to Chemical Communications. “pH Influenced Molecular Switching with Micelle Bound Cavitands” Kim, Y. J., Lek, M. T., Schramm, M. P. Chem. Commun. 2011, 47, 9639-9638. DOI:10.1039/C1CC12901E
Monica Royer presented her work towards Modular alpha-Helical Peptidomimectics at UC Santa Barbara SCURC conference
Katie Feher presented her work towards Selective Small Molecule Membrane Transport at UC Santa Barbara SCURC conference
Professor Schramm presented the group's work at Pacifichem in Honolulu - “Preparation and Screening of a Modular alpha-Helical Peptidomimetic Library.”
New Publication in Organic Syntheses
“Cycloaddition of 1-Triisopropylsiloxy-1-hexyne with Methyl Crotonate: 3-Butyl-4-methyl-2-triisopropylsiloxy-cyclobut-2-enecarboxylic Acid Methyl Ester.” Schramm, M. P.; Shubinets, V. Kozmin, S. A.* Org. Synth. 2010, 87, 253-263.
Prof. Schramm was awarded the Mayfield Award for Outstanding Faculty Member in College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, CSULB August 2010
Brittany Maynard was awarded an Undergraduate Research Fellowship from the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry for Summer 2010.
Michelle Hansol Park presented a poster on her progress towards preparing a library of alpha-helical Peptidomimetics at the 2010 ACS Undergraduate Research Symposium at Chapman University
Massiel Trujillo was accepted to UCSF's Pharm.D. Program, congratuations Massiel!
Prof. Schramm presented the Schramm lab's work at CSU Northridge as part of their seminar series.
Jenny Pham and Michelle Hansol Park presented individual posters on their progress towards preparing a library of alpha-helical Peptidomimetics at the 2009 CNSM Poster Session.
New Publication in Tetrahedron
"Translational motion insideself-assembled encapsulation complexes " Dariush Ajami, Michael P. Schramm, Julius Rebek, Jr.* Tetrahedron 65 (2009) 7208–7212.
 
Research Interests:
Molecular recognition is the study of how and why molecules interact. At its essence lies the attraction of molecules at energy levels “weaker than covalent.” Hydrogen bonding, metal coordination, and the hydrophobic effect cover some of these possible forces. In nature we find countless crucial interactions predicated on noncovalent interactions such as; enzyme-substrate recognition, DNA-protein binding, and ion-receptor transport. From a synthetic point of view these principles have strongly influenced areas of research from drug design to materials science to molecular self-assembly. Our research uses molecular recognition as a design principle to develop new synthetic molecules that are compatible with and capable of regulating biological function.
Selective Small-Molecule Membrane Transport via Synthetic Molecular Receptors
Recently, we discovered that a series of cavitands (synthetic vase-shaped molecular receptors) exhibited selective recognition when immersed in aqueous phosphocholine micelles. Cavitands of this type typically only function in organic solvents. In water they display very poor solubility – in fact their function as a receptor is non-existent in pure water as they tend to form cavity-less dimers. In the presence of micelles, however, their behavior as selective receptors was restored. Adamantanes served as an ideal guest “handle.” We appended this particular handle with a variety of functional groups (in the illustrated case a green fluorophore) and these guests were observed to bind on the NMR timescale. This binding event occurred despite the guest’s lack water solubility and the presence of a virtual sea of competing alkyl chains present in the micelle interior.
 
micelle
 
Micelles serve as the most simplistic model of biological membranes. In the next stage of this research program we will employ our cavitands and study whether they are capable of transporting small molecules across the lipid bilayer of unilamellar vesicles. The ultimate goal of this project is the transport of small drug-like molecules across mammalian cell membranes.

Students interested in synthesis, host-guest interactions, membrane transport, or fluorescence microscopy are encouraged to inquire further.

Modular α-Helical Peptidomimetics
The field of peptidomimetics emerged in part due to the failure of peptides and proteins to serve as drugs. Several factors contribute to poor protein/peptide bioavailability such as: proteolytic degradation, poor membrane penetration, and conformational instability. The discovery that proteins typically interact through small portions of their total surface established a new paradigm for small molecule design; to localize amino acid side chain analogs in space such that they interact/interrupt as the progenitor protein would. The α-helix is an important structural model in the study of protein-protein interactions (e.g. calmodulin-smMLCK) and has served as a peptidomimetic model in the study of apoptosis. The Bak-Bcl and p53-HDM2 interactions involve key α-helical subdomains as their main recognition motif and serve as important regulatory mechanisms for cell death, thus making them both of great interest to chemotherapy. Several studies have already been directed at these targets, the most notable relying on a terphenyl scaffold that successfully positions the side-chain analogs in space mimicking the native protein. Molecular modeling demonstrates this, but true validation was shown through in vitro analysis, which resulted in sub-micromolar hits. The key to understanding α-helical mimetic design is that the side chains of the parent protein responsible for activity are on the same face of the helix, and are arranged at either i, i+3, and i+7, or i, i+4, and i+7 intervals. The figure below demonstrates the geometric similarities between a natural peptide made of 8 alanine residues and one of our mimetic prototypes. The key residues are in good spatial agreement as measured by molecular modeling.
 
micelle
 

Almost all peptidomimetic strategies to date suffer from several major problems: 1) limited water solubility, 2) non-modular, and 3) lengthy (10+ step) syntheses. We aim to overcome these challenges using a combinatorial approach, where a library of building blocks are assembled in a few simple steps to generate libraries of 100s to 1000s of compounds whose properties can readily be tested using in vitro high-throughput screening techniques.

Thus far we have acheived progress towards several of these goals and have developed a consise strategy to make a structurally diverse library.
micelle

Students interested in synthesis, drug-design, drug-screening, or molecular modeling are encouraged to inquire further.
Chirality and Catalysis
The study of chirality and catalysis are two cornerstones of modern organic synthesis. We are currently exploring these areas from a less traditional angle. Students intersted in these areas are encouraged to make contact for more details.
 
Selected References
pH Influenced Molecular Switching with Micelle Bound Cavitands
Kim, Y. J., Lek, M. T., Schramm, M. P.
Chem. Commun. 2011, 47, 9639-9638.
Compounds with All-Carbon Functions:1,3-dienes, Synthesis by Elimination Reactions
Schramm, M. P.
(2009) Science of Synthesis, Houben-Weyl Methods of Molecular Transformation, Georg Thieme Verlag KG, 46.9.
Translational motion inside self-assembled encapsulation complexes
Ajami, D., Schramm, M. P., Rebek, J. Jr.
Tetrahedron 2009, 65, 7208–7212 DOI: 10.1016/j.tet.2008.06.108
Effects of Remote Chiral Centers on Encapsulated Molecules
Schramm, M. P., Rebek, J., Jr.
New J. Chem. 2008, 32, 794-796.
Influence of Remote Asymmetric Centers in Reversible Encapsulation Complexes
Schramm, M. P., Restorp, P., Zelder, F., Rebek, J., Jr.
J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2008, 130, 2450-2451.
Guest Recognition with Micelle-Bound Cavitands
Schramm, M. P., Hooley, R. J., Rebek, J., Jr.
J. Am. Chem. Soc. (Article), 2007, 129, 9773-9779.
Assembly of Hybrid Synthetic Structures
Ajami, D., Schramm, M. P., Volonterio, A., Rebek, J.
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2007, 46, 242-244.
Moving Targets: Recognition of Alkyl Groups
Schramm, M. P., Rebek, J.
Chem. --Eur. J. (Review, Cover Article) 2006, 12, 5924-5933.
Silver Catalzyed [2+2] Cycloaddtions of Siloxyalkynes
Sweis, R. A., Schramm, M. P., Kozmin, S. A.
J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2004, 7442-7443.
Siloxyalkyne-Alkene Metathesis: Rapid Access to Highly Functionalized Enones.
Schramm, M. P., Reddy, D. S., Kozmin, S. A.
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2001, 4274-4277.