CENTRO SINGULAR DE INVESTIGACIÓN EN QUÍMICA BIOLÓGICA Y MATERIALES MOLECULARES

UNIVERSIDAD DE SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA

In conexión with our continuous interest on carbohydrate chemistry, we ared now involved in a research programme which takes advantage of unexplored nitrosugar based synthetic routes, with the aim of addressing unresolved questions in the field of amino acid and peptide chemistry. This  field of research is of great interest, given the number of possible applications that range from foldamers to enzymatic inhibitors. As demonstrated by our recent publications in the field, our group is a pioneer in this line of research.

We intend to continue our contributions in this unexplored basic field of research by developing simpler and more efficient methods for the synthesis of cycloalkane polyhydroxilated b-amino acids. For this sake, we propose to develop new carbohydrate based synthetic routes that employ ring closing metathesis as a powerful tool for the synthesis of carbocyclic and heterocyclic compounds. We intend to exploit the versatility of these reactions for a variety of purposes, such as the unexplored synthesis routes for cycloalkanic polyhidroxylated g- and d-aminoacids. These methods could afford multigram yields to be used for the following applications:

• Structural studies that aim to study the peptide fold that contain the amino acids mentioned above. This research line is a continuation of our work on computer assisted design, synthesis and structural determination of cycloalkanic b-aminoacid based peptides.
• Applications of the resulting peptides in biological and materials chemistry.