Application of Synthetic Organic and Medicinal Chemistry Toward Medical Advances in Cancer, Antibiotics, and Drug Delivery

Cancer and bacterial infections are a great concern in our society and have affected populations worldwide. The objective of this research was to discover new therapies for treating bacterial infections and cancer, and for promoting drug delivery. DapE is an essential component in succinylase biosynthetic pathway, which is critical to production of lysine and m-DAP which both are essential in protein synthesis and bacterial peptidoglycan cell wall construction. Synthetic approaches were developed to prepare a new substrate for the N-succinyl-L,L-diaminopimelic acid desuccinylase (DapE) enzyme enabling the discovery of new antibiotics that inhibit DapE. MMPs are over expressed in cancer, in particular the gelatinases MMP-2 and MMP-9 that were targeted in this work. BNCT is a therapeutic technique that is used to treat many forms of cancer (brain, prostate, oral, head/neck) as well as rheumatoid arthritis. Carborane-containing MMP ligands were prepared and successfully tested as highly potent MMP inhibitors against MMP-2 and MMP-9 but which spare inhibition of MMP-1. Host-guest processes are in important aspect in chemistry and in the body at the cellular surface or with enzymes. We have demonstrated that racemic macrocycles can be enantiomerically differentiated by 1H NMR analysis when the macrocyclic chiral shift reagent (Chirabite-AR) is employed, and have demonstrated that a new chiral macrocyclic lactam undergoes rapid racemization upon attempted resolution