Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

) Chirality is a property that many molecules possess, and it is often compared to handedness since chiral molecules are identical except for being right- or left-handed. Chirality is widely prevalent in nature: from the spiral of snail shells to the helical twist in DNA. Nineteen of the twenty essential amino acids are chiral, and in mammalian species, these exist only in their left-handed forms. Since amino acids are the building blocks of peptides, proteins, and enzymes, the biochemical machinery of the body relies on chiral interations. ) A classic example of the significance of chirality in living systems is Thalidomide, prescribed to prevent morning sickness in the late 1950's. Like many other pharmaceuticals, Thalidomide is chiral. Although the right-handed form is effective at curing morning sickness and is otherwise completely harmless, the left-handed form, causes severe birth defects. Since Thalidomide was sold as a mixture of the R and S forms, mothers taking as little as one pill between the 20th and 36th day of conception gave birth to babies with severe birth defects. Penicillin also relies on chirality for activity since the righted handed form mimics the amino acids in the cell walls of bacteria, while the other is ineffective. ) Nine out of the top ten drugs on the market are chiral, including Lipitor ($16 billion p.a.), Zocor ($5.9 billion p.a.), Plavix ($5.0 billion p.a.) and Nexium ($4.8 billion p.a.). Unfortunately, methods to access chiral compounds as the right handed or left handed form are not simple. Traditional approaches revolve around separation of the two forms, but this is costly and wasteful since the ""wrong"" form, which is 50% of the mixture by definition, is discarded. Thus many researchers are looking at ways of preparing one form or the other via a de novo selective synthesis (the Nobel prize was given in 2001 for this). In order to do this, a way to analyze the selectivity of the reaction is essential to permit optimization. With four department members actively involved in this area, we request a dedicated instrument to permit us to analyze chiral compounds we produce and asses how selective our transformations are. This is absolutely essential for our research.