Filippo Romiti
University of Texas at Dallas, TX·Chemistry·Early-career
Many medicines started out as natural products, which are molecules made by plants and microbes. However, the most promising of these molecules are often too complex to make in the lab in useful amounts.
- Fields
Chemistry
Pharmacology
- Topics
total synthesis
natural products
bisindole alkaloids
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through May 2030
What they work on
- Develop a catalytic chemoselective amide reduction combined with a Friedel–Crafts coupling, which joins two alkaloid units directly, and show its use in short syntheses of the bisindole alkaloids kopsoffine and pleiomutine.
- Devise the first synthetic routes to bisleuconothines and angustifonines, two families of complex bisindole alkaloids with promising anti-cancer activity.
- Complete the first total synthesis of criophylline by developing a new electrochemical oxidation that converts an amine into a lactam, a ring-shaped amide.
- Develop catalytic stereoselective methods, which control the 3D shape of products, that quickly build densely substituted polycyclic building blocks with multiple chiral centers.
- Achieve reliable access to bioactive terpenes and alkaloids, plus synthetic analogs, for use as biological probes and drug leads in cancer, neurological disorders and infectious disease.
More about the research
This makes it hard to study how they work or to turn them into drugs. The two projects described here focus on new chemical reactions and synthesis strategies, meaning planned step-by-step routes for building molecules. The goal is to make complex alkaloids (nitrogen-containing natural products) and terpenes (carbon-ring natural products) efficiently, along with new man-made versions of them.
Why it matters
Natural products remain a major source of new drugs, but many promising ones cannot be made in large enough amounts to test. Scalable routes to anti-cancer bisindole alkaloids and to terpenes and alkaloids active against cancer, neurological disorders and infections could give researchers material to probe how these compounds act and to develop them as drug leads. The new reactions could also help chemists who make pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals and materials.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
David Sarlah
Rice University, TX·Chemistry
Develop a stereoselective olefination, a double-bond-forming reaction that controls 3D shape, to efficiently build the strained [5.3.2] bicyclic ring system of the cripowellin alkaloids.
Brian Stoltz
California Institute of Technology, CA·Chemistry
Develop new stereoselective reactions that produce densely substituted, enantioenriched building blocks for synthesizing complex molecules.
Joshua Pierce
North Carolina State University, NC·Chemistry
Develop scalable, short synthetic routes to antimicrobial natural product families including polycyclic guanidines, oxazolidinones, curvulamines and abyssomicins, producing enough material for biological testing.
The school
University of Texas at Dallas: 16 labs on PI Pages, $182M a year on research, 239 research doctorates a year.
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