Sarah Reisman
California Institute of Technology, CA·Chemistry
Many medicines began as natural products, molecules made by plants and microbes. Their crowded, three-dimensional shapes make them hard to build in the lab.
- Fields
Chemistry
Pharmacology
- Topics
organic synthesis
total synthesis
natural products
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jun 2031
What they work on
- Develop a photoredox-catalyzed radical-polar crossover annulation (RPCA), a light-driven ring-forming reaction, to build the bridged bicyclo[3.2.1]octane core of the polyketide natural product enterocin.
- Complete enterocin from the RPCA product through several proposed routes, including C–H functionalization, which turns inert carbon–hydrogen bonds into useful bonds.
- Apply the RPCA as a scaffold-transposition method that converts lactones (cyclic esters) into carbocycles, all-carbon rings.
- Create modular, programmable total syntheses of diterpenoid natural products such as myrsinanes, grayananes and diseco-isoryanodanes, which show activity in cancer, pain and immune modulation.
- Develop stereoselective nickel-catalyzed decarbonylative and decarboxylative cross-electrophile couplings from alkyl carboxylic acid derivatives, with high-throughput experiments to predict new reactive partner pairs.
More about the research
Making them chemically lets researchers change their structure piece by piece and learn what makes them work. This research invents new catalytic reactions, especially reactions that join carbon atoms, and uses them to build complex natural products and drug-like molecules. Two projects share this goal: one targets the natural product enterocin, and the other combines diterpene synthesis with nickel-catalyzed coupling.
Why it matters
Faster ways to build complex, three-dimensional molecules could help medicinal chemists make and improve drug candidates and agrochemicals. Lab routes to diterpenes with anticancer, pain-relieving or immune activity could supply them as biological probes or lead compounds. New nickel couplings could make drug-like building blocks easier to prepare for screening.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Patrick Walsh
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Chemistry
Develop enantioselective nickel-catalyzed cross-electrophile coupling, which joins sulfur electrophiles with aryl or alkyl halides, to make diaryl and alkyl aryl sulfoxides enriched in one mirror-image form.
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.
Tomislav Rovis
Columbia University, NY·Chemistry
Develop reactions that build nitrogen-containing rings (heterocycles) directly from simple feedstocks such as alkenes and alkanes, forming carbon–carbon and carbon–nitrogen bonds in one step without later manipulation.
The school
California Institute of Technology: 18 labs on PI Pages, $445M a year on research, 200 research doctorates a year.
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