# KU Leuven

Piet Herdewijn's group published structural work on a Thermococcus kodakarensis DNA polymerase (KOD-H4) engineered for HNA (hexose nucleic acid) reverse transcription, providing the first structural insight into how a DNA polymerase processes a xeno-nucleic acid backbone.

Source: https://en.bioecon.ru/companies/ku-leuven/
Updated: 2026-07-05

- Country: Belgium

## Verifiable facts

| Fact | Value | Source |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Affiliation | Department of Medicinal Chemistry, Rega Institute, KU Leuven, Belgium | https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11724289/, https://www.kuleuven.be/wieiswie/en/person/00010383 |
| Research focus | Medicinal chemistry, drug discovery (virology, bacteriology, immunology, neurosciences), synthetic biology, nucleic acid chemistry, artificial genetic systems, and directed evolution of polymerases | https://research.kuleuven.be/portal/en/user/U0010383, https://ullapharmsci.org/wp-content/uploads/ULLA-Research-Portfolios-latest.pdf, https://www.michaeljfox.org/researcher/piet-herdewijn-phd |
| Grant | ERC grant for XNA development; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft grant (MA2288/22-1); Medical Research Council grant (MC_U105178804) | https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkae1156, https://gbiomed.kuleuven.be/english/research/50000715/spotlightfolder/erc_PH, https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0351418, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11724289/ |
| Headcount | Approximately 20 PhD students and 15 Postdocs (as of 2019) | https://ullapharmsci.org/wp-content/uploads/ULLA-Research-Portfolios-latest.pdf |
| Principal staff | Piet Herdewijn, Mikhail Abramov, Frédérick Coosemans | https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkae1156, https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0351418, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11724289/ |

Independent sources: doi.org, journals.plos.org, michaeljfox.org, pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, ullapharmsci.org

## Technologies

- [Xenobiology & expanded genetic alphabet (XNA)](https://en.bioecon.ru/technology/xenobiology-expanded-genetic-alphabet/)