Research in our group focuses on the development of metal-catalyzed carbon-carbon and carbon-heteroatom bond formation through C-H activation and total synthesis and structure-activity relationship studies of biologically active natural products. Current research programs in our laboratory include: 1) palladium-catalyzed C-H functionalization: investigation of novel transformations on aromatic and non-aromatic heterocycles, as well as metal-catalyzed cascade reactions; 2) total synthesis and structure-activity relationship studies of ascochlorin as an inhibitor of activator protein-1 (AP-1) for selective cytotoxicity in estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer; 3) synthesis and structure-activity relationship studies of aplysamine 6 to inhibit a novel target isoprenylcysteine carboxyl methyltransferase (ICMT).
