Adventures in Natural Product Synthesis

Thomas Magauer

Natural products constitute a vast and largely unexplored library of complex molecular architectures, and are a fundamental source for novel pharmaceutical and agricultural agents. However, the complex architecture of these molecules often prevented their application in medicinal chemistry. For us, this is an inspiration to think about new retrosynthetic bond disconnections which are not possible with current methods. The goal is to discover, design and develop novel, highly selective and efficient reactions for synthetic chemists. Mechanistic studies to better understand reactivity and selectivity will be performed when appropriate. These strategies will be applied in the synthesis of biologically relevant complex natural products and simplified analogs thereof. These projects should ultimately provide new lead compounds for the treatment of human diseases, shed light on proposed biosynthetic processes, and help to identify new molecular targets.