Organic Synthesis is, of course, the very core of the Laboratory SOS & PePSy. Without efficient synthetic methods to obtain our molecules of interest, like non-natural aminoacids, peptides, oligomers, natural and bioactive compounds, further applications would not be possible. Particular attention is paid to the development of green methods, thanks to the use of catalytic reactions, supported catalysis and flux chemistry. Global issues like climate change, water shortages and natural resource scarcity, challenge particularly chemistry to find high yielding methods with a lower environmental impact, to develop a suistainable world.

 

 

The identification and synthesis of natural and bioactive compounds it has always been a major challenge in organic and analytical chemistry. An efficient and easy access to those compounds, it's not only of great interest for biomedicinal applications but also for the development of more efficient agri-food technologies. For example, thanks to the earlier work of Prof. Carpita, and our collegues of the agricultural science department, it was possible to identify new sex-specific compounds of olive-fruit fly, a major pest in the cultivation of olive. Moreover, we completed the total synthesis of Asparenydiol, and the synthesis through flow chemistry of Pterostilbene.

Foldamers are oligomers able to fold in stable conformational structure thanks to specific attractive or repulsive interactions between sites remote in sequences, like solvophobic effects, hydrogen bonding, local conformational restrictions, internal constrain or other stabilizing interactions. The comprehension of these properties and the possibility to design and synthesise specific sequences are of great importance in medicinal chemistry, especially to target protein-protein interaction domains, an approach of increasing interest in science.

Conformational diversity is the way of Nature to disclose fundamental properties, as shown in the picture above. We are interested in the mimic of natural oligomers and biopolymers. A deeper knowledge on the conformational and structural geometries at a molecular level allows a fine tuning of macroscopic properties. The use of a bottom-up approach leads to the synthesis of new compounds and materials for many different apllications. In particular we are interested in the development of soft materials for biomedical applications and on the synthesis of amphiphilic molecules for crystallization and stabilization of membrane proteins.