Mark Biscoe
CUNY City College, NY·Chemistry
Many drug molecules are chiral: they come in two mirror-image forms, like left and right hands, and the two forms can act very differently in the body. Making a single mirror-image form of a complex molecule, and making many related versions for testing, is a major challenge in drug discovery.
- Fields
Chemistry
Pharmacology
- Topics
organic chemistry
synthetic methodology
cross-coupling
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2027
What they work on
- Develop palladium- and copper-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions that transfer handedness from enantioenriched secondary alkylboron reagents to new carbon centers with predictable retention or inversion.
- Extend stereospecific cross-coupling to enantioenriched alkylstannane (tin-based) reagents for alkyl–aryl and alkyl–alkyl carbon–carbon bond formation.
- Apply these reactions to modify medicinally relevant frameworks and build chiral structures that are currently inaccessible, producing libraries of single-mirror-image drug candidates.
More about the research
This project aims to develop general chemical tools for controlling the three-dimensional shape of molecules as they are built.
Why it matters
Drug discovery depends on making many related molecules in a single mirror-image form, which is often slow and costly. General, predictable methods for building these three-dimensional structures could speed the preparation of compound libraries for testing as drug candidates. They could make common, high-demand molecular frameworks easier, safer and cheaper to access.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Gregory Fu
California Institute of Technology, CA·Chemistry
Develop nickel- and copper-catalyzed substitution reactions that couple families of alkyl electrophiles and nucleophiles not previously shown to react together, including highly hindered substrates.
Ming Chen
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, VA·Chemistry·Early-career
Develop asymmetric transformations of 1,1-bisborylalkanes bearing two chemically distinct boron groups on one carbon, so that each group can be activated separately to attach fragments in a chosen order.
Ramesh Giri
Pennsylvania State University, PA·Chemistry
Develop transition-metal-catalyzed difunctionalization of alkenes bearing simple functional groups, using a dual ligand system of electron-deficient alkenes and organic nitriles to stabilize intermediates and promote C(sp3)–C(sp3) bond formation.
The school
CUNY City College: 9 labs on PI Pages, $72M a year on research, 31 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.