Research Interests
Overview: Our program is focused on the discovery of new practical catalytic reactions with broad substrate scope, excellent chemoselectivity, and high stereoselectivity to access novel medicinally relevant architectures. We believe the best strategy for developing new classes of catalysts and reactions applicable to organic synthesis is using mechanistic insight to guide the discovery process. This allows us to design new reaction motifs or catalysts in which unique bond constructions can be implemented furthering new approaches to molecule construction. An underlying theme to these methodologies is to convert relatively simple substrates into much more complex compounds allowing for access to known and novel pharmacaphores in a modular manner. This provides us the ability to readily synthesis analogs enabling us to understand the important structural features responsibility for a phenotypic response in a given biological assay. We are currently engaged in several collaborative projects to evaluate our compound collections for various cancer types at the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah and are engaged in follow-up investigations to identify improved compounds as well as understanding the mechanism of action. The group is engaged in the following diverse projects:
Pd-Catalyzed Alkene Oxidations (Funded by the NIH)
- New Catalysts and Synthetic Applications for Wacker Oxidations
- Pd-Catalyzed Alkene Difunctionalization Reactions Coupled to O2 Reduction
- Pd-Catalyzed Alkene Hydrofunctionalization Reactions Coupled to Alcohol Oxidation
Enantioselective Catalysis and Ligand Design (Funded by the NSF)
- Asymmetric Catalytic Carbonyl Allylation with Cr Complexes
- Physical Organic Chemistry in Catalyst Design
Novel Diarylmethines as Lead Compounds for Breast Cancer Therapy (Funded by the NIH)
- Medicinal Chemistry and Chemical Biology
