Cancer is a complex and multifactorial problem that we often seek to treat with one-dimensional solutions, not surprisingly with limited practical gain in overall patient survival. Work in my lab aims to harness the power of organic synthesis to develop materials and approaches that address the problem underlying current uni-targeted approaches - the rapid resistance emergence, the evasive cancer stem cells, and the brief period of positive clinical outcome for cancer patients. It is anticipated that vigorous efforts in this direction will illuminate many areas of chemical and life sciences, and may result in innovative platforms to target future therapies. Our approach is interdisciplinary, combining ligand design and synthesis, combinatorial chemistry and high-throughput screening with bioinformatics, structural, molecular and cell biology, with the ultimate goal of revealing new basic biological mechanisms and disease treatments.
