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Secondary metabolites as potential cancer therapeutic leads : : synthesis and chemical biology of Englerin A and Fusarisetin A

Abstract

Secondary metabolites generated from natural sources such as microbes, fungi, marine fauna and other microorganism have proven to represent a microcosm of chemical diversity and therefore a great source of novel phamacophoric structures. It is without question that nature in its long biological and chemical evolution has gifted us with beautiful molecular architectures with equally important biological function to provide leads into new and potentially useful biologically active molecules. As a result, it is not surprising that drug discovery efforts, in both industry and academia, have greatly benefited from isolation and characterization of secondary metabolites. For this reason, it is still important to continue our investigative endeavors toward the discovery of novel motifs with undescribed mechanisms of action in the effort to provide new leads towards oncologic small molecule therapeutics. As synthetic chemist secondary metabolites can also encompass lessons about complex reactivity and, with the accelerated development of more sophisticated reactions, can present new challenges to develop more efficient and elaborate strategies towards the total synthesis of complex organic structures. It is both an intricate structural architecture and unprecedented biological activity that provide a solid research project towards the development of a synthetic route of a small molecule secondary metabolite. Englerin A and fusarisetin A both represent all these important attributes and were therefore selected by the primary investigator as synthetic targets for research. Research herein described the work surrounding the formal synthesis of englerin A, the chemical biology in terms of Structural-Activity- Relationship of englerin A, the total synthesis of fusarisetin A, and the chemical biology of fusarisetins. Chapter 1 will narrate the background and research related to synthetic studies and chemical biology of englerin A. Chapter 1 will narrate the background and research related to synthetic studies and chemical biology of fusarisetin A

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