Research
       
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New
Strategies
to S- and P-Heterocycles and The
major goal of our research program is the development of new synthetic
routes to structurally diverse phosphorus- and sulfur-containing small
molecules that will serve as building blocks for the synthesis of
novel pharmaceutical agents and various natural products.
In particular, we have focused our attention on the utilization
of both ring-closing metathesis (RCM) and intramolecular
cyclopropanation (ICP) reactions as a means to produce S-
and P-heterocycles exhibiting both biological and synthetic utility.
Central to these methods is the generation of P-chiral
motifs via desymmetrization processes and/or the use of temporary
phosphorus tethers (P-tethers)
en route to phosphonosugars, DMP 323 analogs and an array of
biologically potent natural products.
Another facet of our program is aimed at using ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) en route to the generation of high-load, soluble oligomers as tools for organic synthesis and combinatorial purification strategies. Two general strategies are being investigated: i) in situ ROM polymerization of norbornenyl-tagged monomers mediated by the Grubbs catalyst as an integrated and general purification operation, and ii) utilization of ROM polymerization to produce high-load, functional oligomers with tunable solubility profiles that can be exploited in library production. Fundamental to this effort is the development of ROMP technologies such as capture-ROMP-release, scavenge-ROMP-filter, ROMP-scavenge-filter, and soluble ROMP supports. Prospective
Graduate or Undergraduate Students: If you are interested in joining our group, and would like more
information, feel free to e-mail Paul and/or make
an appointment to speak with him.
You can also visit the University
of Kansas
website (info on Graduate
School)
and the Chemistry
Department
website (info on Graduate
Program). Our group is
committed to training scientists for careers in both academic and
industrial environments, and to that end provide a number of training
opportunities. Among
these, include both Wednesday and Friday problem sets, which expose
the organic synthetic student to current literature in the form of
"fill in the blank" or "roadmap" problems based on
a recently published article. Our group also engages in Molecule
of the Month meetings (MOM-meetings), in which students work in teams to
propose synthetic routes towards the construction of natural products.
Most training takes place in the lab itself, including the use
of modern synthetic techniques, training in NMR, Gas Chromatography,
High Performance Liquid Chromatography, gel permeation chromatography,
light scattering, microwave synthesis and data base searching
techniques. We thank the
following agencies for their generous support: NIH Combinatorial Methodology and Library Development Center of
Excellence (KU-CMLD, National
Institutes of Health (NIGMS GM-58103-02) National Science
Foundation Career Award (NSF 9984926) Herman Frasch
Foundation (ACS) K*STAR First
Award (EPSCoR-NSF) National Science
Foundation REU Program University of Kansas Research Development Fund
Petroleum
Research Fund (ACS) PRF-G Petroleum Research Fund (ACS) PRF-ACUniversity of
Kansas Graduate Research Fund University of
Kansas McNair Scholar Program Department of
Defense (DoD) Breast Cancer Research Program National
Institutes of Health (NIH) K-BRIN Materia, Inc. Neogenesis
Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
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