Abstract
There can be no more noble undertaking than the invention of medicines. Chemists that make up the engine of drug discovery are facing incredible pressure to do more with less in a highly restrictive and regulated process that is destined for failure more than 95% of the time. How can academic chemists working on the synthesis of natural products help these heroes of drug discovery – those in the pharmaceutical industry? With selected examples from our lab, this talk will focus on that question highlighting interesting findings in fundamental chemistry and new approaches to scalable chemical synthesis.
Speaker Profile
Professor Phil Baran is a Professor of Chemistry at Scripps Research, California. He graduated from New York University with a Bachelor of Science with Honours in Chemistry. Prof Baran did his PhD under Professor K.C. Nicolaou in The Scripps Research Institute, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship under Professor E.J. Corey at Harvard University. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2013 and became a member of The National Academy of Sciences in 2017. Prof Baran has also received numerous other awards including the MacArthur Fellowship in 2013, the Blavatnik National Laureate in Chemistry Award in 2016 and the Inhoffen Medal in 2019. Prof Baran’s current research focuses on developing innovative synthetic strategies to achieve the total synthesis of structurally complex natural products while maximising atom economy.
