life sciences
Synthesis of Organic Products Inspired From Natural Compounds Sneha Makhijani
Medical illnesses and diseases are rampant across the world. With new strains of diseases like the influenza, the coronavirus and existing maladies like HIV/AIDS and others, pharmaceutical companies and research labs are striving towards working towards finding medicines and other cures. Compounds or medicines that may exert a direct physiological effect on animals, plants, or microorganisms are called Biologically Active Compounds (BACs). Compounds like vitamins, antibiotics, and insecticides are all BACs as they have direct physiological effects on living beings. BACs have a great importance in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries as they have a diverse range of effects in the human body and can be used to regulate biological processes for instance, antioxidant properties of some BACs. BACs are complex structures created from organic molecules, which are generally any chemical compounds that contain carbon.1 Organic chemistry is the study of the properties, synthesis, reactions of these organic compounds. Dr. Sidney Wilkerson-Hill, Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is leading the synthesis of these Biologically Active Compounds as they aid in the synthesis of natural products to be used in medicines. As a pioneering researcher in organic chemistry, Dr. Hill’s lab foDr. Sidney Wilkerson-Hill cuses on three main processes. The first is the development of new chemical reactions and their reaction methodology.1 These are critical for advances in different sectors like pharmaceutical, biological, and material. The main idea behind these reactions is access to chemical space.1 This is a concept which refers to the property of space that belongs to molecules which are defined by principles of boundary conditions in a chemical compound. Cycloaddition reactions are especially important because they allow a rapid increase in this chemical space due to their complexity.1 Cycloaddition reactions are specific chemical reactions used in organic chemistry which basically
Figure 1: Glycosmis stenocarpaand Murraya koenigii. Two different shrubs found throughout Asia from which dimers are obtained. Image Courtesy of Dr. Sidney Wilkerson-Hill.
have a cyclic or circular structure to them. The Hill Lab focuses on developing cycloaddition reactions which have such a relative spatial arrangement of atoms. Natural Products which have been isolated from natural sources like bacteria, plants, and marine sponges often have important biological function. For instance, the Biologically Active Compounds can be used in anti-HIV or anticancer drugs.1 These compounds are thus very useful for developing new drugs and pharmaceuticals. These compounds can also be used to understand biologically retroactively by studying the effects of the molecular drugs and their reactivity in the complex chemical environments.1 That’s why the use of natural products to understand complex biology is a major aspect of Dr. Hill’s Lab. Complex natural products can be obtained by the synthesis of a sequence of reactions and this is the third main goal of the Hill Lab.1 Strategies to make these synthetic products can help fuel innovative reaction processes. This can help uncover the new reactivity of small molecules which can also help replace the use of natural products which may be lesser in quantities that are used for particular drugs.1 The total synthesis of this product also refers to how the structure of these products can be deciphered in order to understand how they function. The Hill Lab uses these organic compounds and cycloaddition reactions to understand how these natural products’ functions relate to their structure.1 Dr. Hill’s passion for chemistry originated in a
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