これまでIR、NMR、MSのように機器分析技術の開発は、有機合成化学に革新的な進歩をもたらしてきている。近年の進歩の一つとして、電子線を用いたMicroEDによる構造解析が注目を浴びている。2018年、微結晶低分子有機化合物のMicroEDによる構造決定が報告され、同年ScienceのBREAKTHROUGH OF THE YEARの一つに選ばれるなど適用事例が増えている。弊社ではX線では構造決定が困難であった化合物に関して構造解析を進め、多くの実績を得ている。今回は、医薬品原薬の結晶多形、天然物などのナノクリスタル構造解析例をメインとし、絶対立体配置の決定手法などの結果を発表する。
「Combining Synthetic Chemistry and Biology for Streamlining Access to Complex Molecules」 (Rice University, U.S.A., Professor)Hans Renata
By virtue of their unrivaled selectivity profiles, enzymes possess remarkable potential to address unsolved challenges in chemical synthesis. The realization of this potential, however, has only recently gained traction. Recent advances in enzyme engineering and genome mining have provided a powerful platform for identifying and optimizing enzymatic transformations for synthetic applications and allowed us to begin formulating novel synthetic strategies and disconnections. This talk will describe our recent efforts in developing a new design language in chemical synthesis that centers on the incorporation of biocatalytic approaches in contemporary synthetic logic. Case studies will focus on the use of this platform in the chemoenzymatic syntheses of complex natural products and also highlight how this platform could serve as a starting point to enable further biological and medicinal chemistry discoveries.
「Synthesis through the lens of informatics」 (Scripps Research, U.S.A., Professor)Ryan A. Shenvi
Natural product (NP) total synthesis enables the control of structure and exploration of function via synthesis of optimized analogs, which retain the favorable molecular properties of the parent NP, i.e. its local chemical space. If NP analogs are the ultimate goal, avoidance of the NP itself and direct access to analogs may hold greater benefit: structural liabilities can be removed, library diversity can be improved, and route throughput can be enhanced. This approach provides an additional search dimension for retrosynthesis. Combined with in silico docking, this computational workflow may accelerate the deployment of natural product synthesis towards functional goals. This strategy grew out of our research on salvinorin A (SalA). Here, two scaffold mutations were predicted to stabilize the SalA scaffold, maintain target affinity, maintain gross physicochemical properties yet increase diversification and optimize pharmacodynamics. This approach has been successful and recently delivered analogs with increased potency, selectivity, stability and functional bias for G protein signaling. An identical workflow led to 5-methyl-picrotoxinin, a more complex analog of picrotoxinin (PXN) that simplified synthetic access, stabilized the scaffold and allowed diversification to probe selectivity among ligand-gated ion channels (LGICs). This talk will outline our workflow and provide experimental support.