Research summary
Organic chemistry plays a critical role in the development of new drugs to treat a range of human diseases. As Canada Research Chair in Synthetic Solutions for Bioactive Compounds, Dr. Corinna Shindler is supporting this work by developing new methods for synthesizing complex, biologically significant molecules.
She and her research team have already contributed to the design of synthetic techniques that can provide rapid access to the new molecular frameworks needed to design and develop drugs. Now, they are developing strategies to synthesize complex molecules that target cancer-related inflammation as well as Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacteria that causes tuberculosis. Shindler and her team are focusing on improving carbon-carbon bond formation between alkenes (molecules that contain a double bond between two carbon atoms) and carbonyls (carbon atoms double-bonded to oxygen atoms) or imines (compounds derived from ammonia where one of the hydrogen atoms has been replaced by a carbon group) to create new bioactive compounds.