Manual-Synthesized Natural Products

A team in Shanghai Research Institute of Organic Chemistry engaged in the research on the reaction, synthesis and property of amino acid derivatives has synthesized several marine natural products for the first time in history.    30% of drugs we use today come from molecules of natural products. As medicinal sources of land animals and plants are getting less and less, our attention has been shifted to seas and oceans. Nevertheless, only less than 5% of the thousands of marine natural products discovered each year can finally be synthesized through manual methods.    Besides aprotoxin, the project team has also synthesized quite a few complicated natural substances with bioactivity. Most of them such as microscelrodermin with activity of fungi resistance, halipentin with activity of inflammation resistance and lepadin with activity of malaria resistance are originated from marine organisms such as algae and sponge.    While using amino acid to synthesize natural products, the project team has also used amino acid to modify the Ullmann reaction that has a history of a hundred years. The high-temperature reaction that can only be conducted at 150 degree centigrade can now be completed even at room temperature.