Grant: Canada Research Chairs

The development of pharmacologically active agents that improve the quality of human life has had an enormous societal impact over the last 50 years. Nevertheless, the increasing cost of drug discovery due to the low success rate of clinical candidates has prompted serious analysis of the factors that contribute to the the failure rate. Natural products have historically proven reliable lead compounds for drug discovery. Nevertheless, many companies have abandoned this approach due to the problems associated with the preparation of analogs to conduct Structure Activity Relationship Studies. This program provides new tools for the expeditious construction of pharmacologically relevant motifs, which circumvent the problems with translation between analogous systems.