Synthetic methodologies and natural prouduct synthesis

碳基化合物的化学合成在过去的世纪里一直是科学探索的主要领域，并且该学科仍然远未得到充分发展。 随着我们对化学科学的知识（包括事实和理论）的增长，合成的力量也在增长。 现在，有机化合物的构造包括使用涉及60多种化学元素的反应和试剂，尽管在商业或生物学上重要的分子中通常只包含12种左右的元素。 我们的团队对开发新的和/或更简单的方法来制造光学纯形式的生物学上令人兴奋和结构上具有挑战性的天然产品感兴趣。 虽然自然界是这些“新药”的通常供应者，但它往往只是以非常小的数量，以一种光学形式（三维空间中原子的特定排列）和/或不是最“有效”的结构。 因此，合成有机化学家有责任不仅使这些新化合物呈光学纯形式（尽可能便宜），而且使它们尽可能具有活性（允许服用小剂量）和特异性（很少或没有副作用）。 因此，我们正在继续一项旨在开发方法学的计划，以合成光学富集形式的7元和8元环碳环化合物。与此同时，这个项目，我们正在扩大我们以前的工作，乙烯酮化学。 这将提供快速获得更高度官能化的系统，其可容易地用于合成生物学上重要的化合物，包括抗癌化合物。该方法将为工业界和学术界提供新的和更直接的方法来合成这些类型的化合物，从而为开发用于治疗疾病的新药提供潜力。

The chemical synthesis of carbon based compounds has been a major field of scientific curiosity for over a century, and the subject is still far from being fully developed. As our knowledge of chemical sciences (both fact and theory) has grown so has the power of synthesis. The construction of organic compounds now includes the use of reactions and reagents involving more than sixty of the chemical elements, even though only a dozen or so elements are commonly contained in commercially or biologically significant molecules. Our group is interested in the development of new and/or simpler ways to make biologically exciting and structurally challenging natural products in optically pure form. Although nature is the usual supplier of these "new drugs", it is often times only in very small quantities, in one optical form (the particular arrangement of atoms in 3-dimensional space) and/or not in the most "potent" structure. It is then incumbent upon the synthetic organic chemist to not only make these new compounds in an optically pure form (as cheaply as possible), but also to make them as active as possible (allowing for small doses to be taken) and as specific as possible (little or no side affects). Consequently, we are continuing a program designed at developing methodology to synthesize 7 and 8 membered ring carbocyclic compounds in optically enriched form. Concurrent with this project we are looking at expanding our previous work on ketene chemistry. This will provide quick access to more highly functionalized systems that can be readily used for the synthesis of biologically important compounds, including anti-cancer compounds. The methodology will provide industry and academia new and more direct methods to synthesize these types of compounds, thus providing the potential for the development of new drugs for use in the treatment of diseases.