Vanderbilt Natural Products


VICB RESEARCH Natural Products
Nature offers a marvelous diversity of chemical structures, and many of our valuable therapeutic agents have been derived from natural products. Thus, there is a growing interest in mining these resources for new drug discovery efforts. The chemistry of natural products is often complex and requires specialized synthetic and analytic techniques. VICB chemists are ready to meet this challenge. Gary Sulikowski specializes in tackling difficult natural product syntheses. He chooses his targets on the basis of structural complexity, novel biologic activity, and the opportunity to explore new chemical reactions. Among the successes enjoyed by the Sulikowski lab are the syntheses of apoptolidins, natural products noted for their ability to induce apoptosis in cultured cells, and antitumor agents of the landomycin and mitomycin classes. A characteristic of most natural products is the presence of multiple chiral centers that exist in a single conformation. Stereoselective synthesis of these centers is one of the greatest challenges in natural products chemistry. Jeff Johnston and his lab focus primarily on techniques to meet this challenge. Their novel approach to chiral proton catalysis is a particularly promising approach to amine- and peptide-based natural products. Brian Bachmann takes a different path to natural products, harnessing biosynthetic methods in combination with chemical approaches to achieve his goals. His Natural Products Discovery Program aims to identify new natural products sources with a current focus on cave Actinomycetes. State-of-the-art high throughput fractionation and screening methodologies are then used to identify promising lead compounds for the battle against malaria. Image Source: Gary Sulikowski Laboratory, Vanderbilt University, "Total Synthesis of Complex Natural Products."
School of Medicine \| Vanderbilt University Medical Center \| Vanderbilt University \| Eskind Library \| Search \| Help \| Copyright © 2009, Educational Technology, Biomedical Research Education & Training For more information, please contact Webmaster.

Nature offers a marvelous diversity of chemical structures, and many of our valuable therapeutic agents have been derived from natural products. Thus, there is a growing interest in mining these resources for new drug discovery efforts. The chemistry of natural products is often complex and requires specialized synthetic and analytic techniques. VICB chemists are ready to meet this challenge.

Gary Sulikowski specializes in tackling difficult natural product syntheses. He chooses his targets on the basis of structural complexity, novel biologic activity, and the opportunity to explore new chemical reactions. Among the successes enjoyed by the Sulikowski lab are the syntheses of apoptolidins, natural products noted for their ability to induce apoptosis in cultured cells, and antitumor agents of the landomycin and mitomycin classes.

A characteristic of most natural products is the presence of multiple chiral centers that exist in a single conformation. Stereoselective synthesis of these centers is one of the greatest challenges in natural products chemistry. Jeff Johnston and his lab focus primarily on techniques to meet this challenge. Their novel approach to chiral proton catalysis is a particularly promising approach to amine- and peptide-based natural products.

Brian Bachmann takes a different path to natural products, harnessing biosynthetic methods in combination with chemical approaches to achieve his goals. His Natural Products Discovery Program aims to identify new natural products sources with a current focus on cave Actinomycetes. State-of-the-art high throughput fractionation and screening methodologies are then used to identify promising lead compounds for the battle against malaria.

Image Source: Gary Sulikowski Laboratory, Vanderbilt University, "Total Synthesis of Complex Natural Products."