# Synthesis and Study of Medicinally Important Molecules

> **NIH NIH R35** · EMORY UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $421,309

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
The goal of our research program is to innovate the strategy and methodology of organic synthesis and use
these innovations to solve problems of biological and medicinal importance and ultimately impact human
health. Our program focuses on the synthesis and study of both natural and unnatural molecules with potential
for the treatment of cancer, neurological disorders, and drug resistant infectious diseases. We view the
completion of a chemical synthesis as the beginning of a larger and deeper scholarly inquiry. It would enable
us to profile the biology of the selected natural products and rationally designed small molecules, decipher their
mechanism of actions, and optimize the lead compounds into biological probes and novel therapeutics. The
selected terpenoid and alkaloid natural products represent both the state-of-the-art challenges for complex
molecule synthesis as well as promising lead compounds for novel therapeutic development. Their structural
complexity, natural scarcity, and unknown mechanism of actions have significantly hampered their biomedical
development. We aim to fill this gap and move these molecules forward in the drug discovery pipeline with a
multi-faceted approach centered on innovative chemical synthesis. The expected outcomes of this research
will provide (i) new reactions and strategies in the toolbox of both medicinal chemists and synthetic chemists to
prepare functional molecules, (ii) a reliable access to the selected target molecules with therapeutic
importance, (iii) a collection of medicinally relevant molecules featuring structural novelty, complexity, and
diversity for further and larger biological evaluations in academic institutions and pharmaceutical industries,
and (iv) novel anticancer, anti-neurodegenerative and antimicrobial lead compounds with potentially novel
mode of actions for in vivo and clinical evaluations.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10888151
- **Project number:** 5R35GM128570-08
- **Recipient organization:** EMORY UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Mingji Dai
- **Activity code:** R35 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $421,309
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-08-04 → 2028-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10888151

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10888151, Synthesis and Study of Medicinally Important Molecules (5R35GM128570-08). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10888151. Licensed CC0.

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