Novel bridged bicyclic architectures for medicinal chemistry

This project seeks to exploit coupling chemistry based on non-precious metals to secure starting materials for photochemical syntheses of novel three-dimensional molecular scaffolds. One feature of the programme will be the use of computational chemistry, not only for the understanding of existing reactions, but also for the design of new ones. The proposed programme will train a researcher in the techniques required to carry out modern organic chemistry; these are the practical techniques of synthesis and purification, and the instrumental and intellectual techniques of characterisation and electronic structure calculations, all located within the context of current industrial medicinal chemistry.
The main priorities can be summarised as: 1) the optimisation of the photochemical reaction step; 2) the extension of the arene component to privilege heteroarenes; 3) variation of the alkene components to present different functional groups; 4) the elucidation of the functional group chemistry of the bicyclic photoadducts; 5) the discovery of more concise and sustainable methods of precursor assembly; 6) the construction of a computational model which can be used in reaction triage and design; 7) the identification of selected and illustrative targets relevant to discovery programmes active within GSK.