Our group pursues natural products chemistry with structural, biosynthetic, and pharmacological facets. We approach this topic in a broad, highly interdisciplinary way, applying – and, in part, newly developing – novel efficient methods of analytical, synthetic, computational, and medicinal chemistry.
Our special interest is devoted to stereochemical questions of stereogenic centers (C- or N-based), axes (C,C or C,N, sp2-sp2 or sp2-sp3), of chiral ‘planes’ or helices, both analytically and synthetically, and we test and optimize their bioactivities. Starting from rewarding sources (mostly tropical plants), we search for novel antiparasitic, antileukemic, and anticancer natural products including the elucidation of their full absolute stereostructures. Using biomimetic or non-biomimetic strategies, we elaborate synthetic pathways to the most rewarding metabolites; as an example, we have developed the 'lactone method' for the atropo-selective construction of highly hindered axially chiral biaryl and hetero-biaryl systems of any desired configuration.
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