Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Synthesis of new bioactive compounds of pharmaceutical interest represents a continuing challenge for curing cancer, cardiovascular diseases and other nosocomial infections. Most of the compounds demonstrating useful biological properties against these diseases possess a heterocyclic skeleton such as panacene, juglomycin A, lycoramine, mesembrine, aflatoxin B or isohydroxypsorofebrin. Unfortunately, the natural amount of these products is low and would require damaging an ecosystem to heal some patients. Consequently, it is extremely important to discover new synthetic methods to get these structures quickly for a potential biomedical application. In this context, the research program presented in this proposal is dedicated to the development of novel methodologies in heterocyclic chemistry. In a first part, we propose to develop a metal free aromatic coupling reaction accordingly to the concept of "green chemistry", a formal cycloaddition reaction between aromatics compounds and alkenes/alkynes and an oxidative allylation reaction extended to aromatic compounds. The aim of these transformations is to get heterocyclic skeletons that could be rapidly used in the total synthesis of natural products. In a second part, we plan to achieve the synthesis of enumerated compounds, whose chemical structures could be quickly reproduced with our methodologies. Results afforded by this research program should contribute to the knowledge advancement by the discovery of different novel methodologies applied to the direct synthesis of highly bioactive products.