Research
New catalytic methods
The problem of on-demand supply of strategic or fast-tracked drugs under critical circumstances such as pandemic, once again highlighted the impact of synthetic efficiency on society. As such, there will always be a demand for improvements in efficiency with regard to molecular construction. We aim to address the challenges of efficiency in total synthesis of complex natural products and drug-like molecules. The key to efficiency in synthesis is obviously further advancement of catalytic methods.
Natural product synthesis
Natural products, of differing sizes and complexity, are at the center of the most important cellular processes across all domains of life. For millennia, they remain one of the major source of human medicine and the most privileged source of inspiration for drugs and drug leads. As we head into the third decade of the 21st century amid the coronavirus pandemic, the value of pursuing bioactivity-driven synthetic research is undeniable. Natural product total synthesis is in principle ideal for such purpose.
Chemical biology and Interdisciplinary collaborations
The successful synthesis is not the end of a journey! It provides new research opportunities for interdisciplinary collaborations and gets us out of our comfort zone to learn new fields. Bioactive natural products are ideal for such endeavors as they have evolved for optimal interaction with targets encompassing a broad spectrum of biologically relevant chemical space.