Synthetic organic chemistry plays an important role in drug and agrochemical discovery and the drug development program at the NCNPR. Insufficient quantities of biologically active natural products remain the major impediment for further development of potential drugs as well as their accurate identification including their absolute stereochemistry. Scientists at the NCNPR have vast experience in partial or total synthesis of various natural products, radio-labeled parent compounds and various metabolites of natural products for confirmatory purposes. In addition to these efforts, scientists in the NCNPR have effectively utilized medicinal chemistry approaches to prepare promising natural product leads and analogues for drug development.

Synthetic and Medicinal Chemistry Team

The chemistry team does a significant amount of synthetic chemistry work in collaboration with interdisciplinary colleagues including biomedical researchers. Many of these projects provide us with a unique opportunity to test the biological activity of synthesized compounds and make modifications to improve activity or test important biological principles. To facilitate the various NCNPR research programs, the Synthetic and Medicinal Chemistry Team is involved in:

• Synthesis of natural compounds in sufficient quantities
• Synthesis of analogs to optimize biological activity of lead compounds, structure activity relationships and lead optimization.
• Stereoselective total syntheses to establish the absolute stereo structure of natural compounds
• Isotope-labeled candidates for metabolic studies
• Synthesis of putative drug metabolites for confirmatory and quantitation purposes

Synthesis of supposed biosynthetic intermediates in order to understand the biogenesis of phytochemicals in plants.