Total Synthesis of Natural Products and Chemical Innovation

  Our Laboratory is focused on the total synthesis of naturally complex molecular architectures. Under this basic topic our group seeks to invent novel general synthetic methods as answers to longstanding chemical problems.

1. The Target-Oriented Synthesis of Complex Natural Products. Total synthesis of naturally occurring compounds with complex molecular architectures, useful biological properties and interesting mechanism of biological action, becomes an engine for discovery that drives the field of organic chemistry to new levels of sophistication and practicality. Constant target selection and creative retrosynthetic analyses based on their biosynthesis will be the key of inspiration for their total synthesis, targeting in revealing missing synthetic pathways to longstanding chemical problems.

2. Discovery and Development of Novel Reactions for Target-Oriented Synthesis. New reaction discovery is the most important research activity in the area of organic chemistry, and target-directed reaction discovery is one of the best strategies for identifying important transformations to be developed. Our concern will be the development of general synthetic methods applicable in areas of the science that still remain undiscovered.

  In a broader effort of our group to combine the synthetic methodologies of target-oriented and diversity-oriented synthesis, and advance the so-called biomimetic synthesis of natural products we introduce the concept of bio-inspired intermediates of major classes of secondary metabolites and utilize them as starting points to selectively access the diversity-oriented libraries of Nature.

3. Biological Evaluation. Although our group is certainly oriented in the fundamental research of organic synthesis several collaborations are established with field experts for the biological evaluation of the newly synthesized compounds.