Xiaoguang Lei

Department of Chemical Biology, College of Chemistry,

Peking University, China

Complex natural products provide tremendous opportunities to shape the landscape of organic synthesis, as well as to impact the biomedical research and drug discovery. My laboratory conducts research at the interface between chemistry and biology. We systematically use bioactive small molecules, particularly natural products, to study their biological functions, elucidate molecular mechanisms of the important biological pathways, and develop novel therapeutic agents for currently intractable diseases. Herein, I would like to disclose our recent endeavors towards the biomimetic syntheses of a number of structurally complex and bioactive natural products^[1] and subsequent chemical biology studies using the natural product-based chemical probes^[2].

References:

[1]. Hong, B.; Li, C.; Wang, Z.; Chen, J.; Li, H., Lei, X. “Enantioselective Total Synthesis of (−)-Incarviatone A,” J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2015, DOI: 10.1021/jacs.5b08551.

[2]. Li, C.; Dong, T.; Li, Q.; Lei, X. “Probing the Anti-cancer Mechanism of (-)-Ainsliatrimer A through Diverted Total Synthesis and Bioorthogonal Ligation” Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2014, 53, 12111.