Overseas Travel Grant: From Dendralenes to Antimicrobial Decalins (Visit to Research School of Chemistry, Australian National University)

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Bacterial infections are becoming increasingly hard to treat with current antibiotics and it is well recognised that new treatments are required. The government and the WHO continue to highlight the development of new antibiotics as an area of high priority. Many antimicrobial natural products contain functionalised decalin ring systems. These structural units are synthetically non-trivial to construct and oftentimes require many synthetic steps. It is proposed here that recent advances in the synthesis and characterisation of dendralenes may enable the development of a highly efficient and general transmissive Diels-Alder approach to a large range of functionalised decalin ring systems present in many natural products. If successful, such a route could lead to breakthroughs in the synthesis and supply of these scarce molecules for full biological evaluation. This proposal will build on our previous EPSRC-funded work in the area antimicrobial natural product synthesis and the use of Diels-Alder reactions for the synthesis of biologically active natural products by allowing the PI to spend a period of time embedded in the Sherburn group to gain first-hand experience in the synthesis and handling of dendralenes. This will enable a full proposal for the use of dendralenes in the synthesis of decalin-containing antimicrobials to be developed.