New and Enabling Chemical Tools for Molecular Imaging, Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery

The development of new methodologies is one of the most fundamental and important goals in modern organic chemistry.

As the demands for new medicines, diagnostic tools and materials grow, so do the needs for fast, effective and environmentally sustainable chemistries to explore new chemical space.

Our goal is to expand the current ‘toolbox’ of effective reactions, to allow access to molecular architecture that cannot be prepared using existing state of the art.

Specifically, we will develop a novel and divergent platform for the late-stage functionalization of ubiquitous alcohol substrates.

We will also investigate the preparation of new biologically relevant scaffolds based on diversity generating cascade processes.

In addition, this research proposal will include development of new enabling methods for the mass spectrometry imaging of small organic molecules in biological systems.

This will be achieved through the development of novel and selective reagents for the “on-tissue” derivatization of various functional groups.

These reagents are built upon a unique molecular design strategy and leverage new reactivity modes recently discovered in our lab.

This research will open up exiting possibilities for the discovery of new biomarkers for effective disease diagnosis and treatment.

Importantly, a significant number of successful preliminary results have been obtained to demonstrate the feasibility of the research proposal.