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Synthesis of desired compounds is a primary step of modern science. Synthetic organic chemistry is related to a variety of fields including drug discovery, agricultural science, material science and energy science. Our laboratory performs advanced synthetic organic chemistry to study natural product synthesis, development of new methodology, and chemical biology.
Our group has worked on the total syntheses of bioactive natural products which have complex structures with multiple functional groups and stereogenic centers. Our endeavor directs to create short step routes of the target molecules as well as methodologies to construct the desired skeletons. Figure 2 shows some of our achievements, natural products we synthesized.
It is still difficult to synthesize compounds having multiple stereogenic centers with molecular weight >300 in short step. In order to overcome the problem, we have developed the remote stereo-induction reaction (the vinylogous Mukaiyama aldol reaction with chiral silyl dienol ethers) to introduce stereogenic centers and α,β-unsaturated imide which is easily converted to other functional groups. Recently, we succeeded to develop the stereo- divergent methodology to construct multiple functional groups in one step (Figure 3).
Therefore, we contribute material science and life science by creation of new methodologies and multi-functional products.
Figure 1. The new methodology (the remote stereo-induction reactions) and natural products synthesized by the methodology.
Figure 2. Some of natural products achieved the total syntheses by our group.
Figure 3. The remote stereo-induction reactions to construct both stereogenic centers and the unsaturated imide.
BS, Hokkaido University (1991); MS, Hokkaido University (1993); Ph.D., Nagoya University (1996). Research Associate, Nagoya University (1996-1997); Research Associate, in Scripps Research Institute (1997-1998); Assistant Professor, Tokyo University of Science (1998); Lecturer, Waseda University (2003-2007); Associate Professor, Waseda University (2007-). Sankyo Award in Synthetic Organic Chemistry, Japan (2003); Incentive Award in Synthetic Organic Chemistry, Japan (2008); Thieme Journal Award 2010 (2010).
