The phenomena of life are driven by well-regulated chemical reactions and equilibrium of many organic compounds. Abnormalities in this regulation can cause disease, and organic compounds are often used as the medicine to treat disease. It is thus essential to understand the underlying organic chemistry of drug discovery and treatment of disease. Since highly effective medicines have already been developed for many druggable therapeutic targets, we have to consider how to discover drugs for difficult-to-treat diseases. This challenging situation can be solved by making available compounds that are hard to synthesize with existing methods in drug discovery, or by controlling the interaction of biomolecules that have hitherto been difficult to control. In our laboratory, the following research projects are underway that focus on organic chemistry-driven drug discovery.
1) Synthesis of structurally complex bioactive compounds
2) Novel methods for the synthesis of complex structures and their applications
3) Identification of functional molecules based on designs, synthetic studies and chemical modifications of biomolecules
4) Drug screening programs using in-house chemical libraries