Synthetic methodologies and natural prouduct synthesis

一个多世纪以来，碳基化合物的化学合成一直是一个重要的科学领域，但这一学科仍远未完全发展起来。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。有机化合物的构建现在包括使用涉及60多种化学元素的反应和试剂，尽管通常只有十几种元素包含在具有商业或生物意义的分子中。我们的团队对开发新的和/或更简单的方法感兴趣，以制造具有生物刺激性和结构挑战性的光学纯形式的天然产品。虽然自然界通常是这些“新药”的供应者，但往往只有很小的量，只有一种光学形式(原子在三维空间中的特殊排列)和/或不是最“有效”的结构。因此，合成有机化学家不仅要使这些新化合物具有光学纯的形式(尽可能便宜)，而且要使它们尽可能地活跃(允许小剂量服用)和尽可能具体(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，以合成光学富集型的7和8元环碳环化合物。在这个项目的同时，我们正在考虑扩大我们以前在烯酮化学方面的工作。这将提供快速进入更高功能化的系统，这些系统可以很容易地用于合成具有生物重要性的化合物，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.