Synthetic Studies on Natural Products

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Increasingly, advances in science and technology depend on access to new materials with new properties. Chemistry has a major role to play in the design and molecular construction of new materials ranging from new drugs in the pharmaceutical industry to new devices for the electronics industry. To build the sophisticated structures associated with many of these "designer" materials requires new and more powerful synthetic strategies. Chirality is often a particularly difficult structural element to control at the molecular level. Nonetheless, the sense of chirality can have a profound influence on molecular properties, particularly biological activity. For example, one of the chiral forms of thalidomide is a sedative but the other chiral form causes birth defects; the inability to control the chiral form synthesized meant that both forms were present in the marketed drug and led to the well-known tragedy of the 50's and 60's.