Natural Product and Drug Syntheses

The group is not only involved in the development of new synthetic methods but also in their application in natural product syntheses. Since one of our major fields are amino acid and peptide syntheses, peptides and related structures (e.g. alkaloids) are in our central focus. Many of the often rather unusual peptides are produced by marine organism and / or bacteria and have highly interesting biological properties. Our goal is not only the synthesis of a natural product itself, but also the development of concepts to modify these natural products to generate small libraries of potential drugs (natural product medicinal chemistry). Recently, we enlarged our portfolio also to polyketides and polyketide peptide conjugates. The synthesis of deuterium-labeled compounds also allows the investigation of biosynthetic pathways towards natural products.