Natural products are the active components of many traditional medicines. A large number of currently prescribed drugs are either directly derived from or inspired by natural products. However, the availability of natural products from natural sources can be limited mkaing the full study their properties very challenging. Hence, there is always a need for greener, economic synthetic methodologies for the synthesis of natural products and analogues for the better understanding of their bioactivities with the future prospect of developing novel drugs. Considering the huge importance of natural products in drug discovery, in the proposal, we developed the synthesis of all three members of Inthomycins and C-16 substituted core of the oxazolomycins. These natural products display a wide variety of biological properties, including antibiotic activity, anti-tumour activity and anti-viral activity, thus developing a route has the potential for to benefitfor society in the future. Apart from this, our strategy offers an advancement over the previous literature in terms of sustainability and environment-friendly chemical process that avoids the use of highly toxic chemicals as well as potentially hazardous materials.
The synthesis of the inthomycins has been executed from simple and readily available starting materials to obtain the final core of these natural products efficiently, and should allow the futuer synthesis of the further biologically active natural products the oxazolomycins.
The work conducted during the fellowship will facilitate Dr Kumar to obtain an independent academic research position because during these 2 years he has been able to develop and widen his competences, particularly in terms of multi/interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral experience and transferable skills.
The novel strategies and reactions developed during this fellowship will advance the field of total synthesis of complex biologically active natural products and natural products fragments, which will be useful for both academic and pharmaceutical industries. In addition, the avoidance of toxic material is an advancement to the previous work and a further step towards the environmentally friendly protocols. Also, these natural products have already shown wide range of biological activities. Thus, the developed synthetic strategies will contribute to the social and economic benefit in the Horizon 2020 Programme. Furthermore, the research carried out during the tenure of this fellowship has definitely enhanced the innovation capacity, and helped the candidate develop these critical skills, which are valuable for his career.
The work conducted during these two years of fellowship has been published in a high-ranked journal and one more document will be forthcoming published. Also, work has been presented at many places including academic meetings and industrial symposiums, in which a high interest has been shown from other researchers.