Utilising natural products as starting materials for drug development

Description

Natural products are small molecules produced by plants, microbes, and marine organisms and are widely used as starting points for drug development. This is because their complex and diverse chemical structures often display intrinsic bioactivity, making them valuable “lead compounds” for therapeutic discovery. Many successful drugs, including antibiotics, anticancer agents, and immunosuppressants, are either natural products or derivatives thereof, illustrating how nature-inspired scaffolds continue to guide modern pharmaceutical innovation. However, they can often be classified as poor drugs due to their poor stability, selective or bioavailability.  This project will utilise readily available natural product usnic acid as a starting point to generate novel molecules designed to target cancer cells.

Desired background

• Organic synthesis
• Structure-activity relationship understanding
• Purification techniques
• Chemical chracterisation techniques (NMR, Mass spectrometry)