Future directions in organic synthesis

摘要

Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Hyderabad-500 007, India <em>E-mail</em> : [email protected]. in <em>Fax</em> : 91-40-7173 3 87/7173757 In the beginning, all developments in organic synthesis centred mainly on elucidating structures of natural products. Slowly the emphasis shifted toward developing new reactions and methodologies to achieve total synthesis that reached its zenith toward the end of the twentieth century with more and more structurally complex natural products getting conquered by Synthetic organic chemists. Meanwhile, new scientific developments, especially in the areas of spectroscopy, molecular modeling and biological sciences, have brought in irreversible changes in organic chemistry and drug discovery culture. The traditional methods of finding bioactive molecules from nature arc being supplemented more and more with robotic high throughput screening of combinatorial libraries and structure-based rational drug design processes. The expertise gained over the years by the organic chemists are encouraging them to create new designer molecules that arc expected to provide leads in discovering new drugs and materials.