Research in the Fox group
centers on
the development of new types of
chemical reactions, the application of these new reactions to the
synthesis of natural occurring and designed molecules with biological
function, and in the use of design concepts in organic synthesis for
applications in materials science. The nature of the research
program is highly multidisciplinary, and involves active collaborations
with groups in peptide chemistry, bioorganic chemistry, surface
science, computational chemistry, biology, materials science, and
physics.
Why we develop
new reaction
chemistry?
Simply stated, synthesis is
still a
major bottleneck in applied
settings such as drug discovery and process chemistry. New drugs
are not discovered because we cannot make molecules quickly enough, and
one reason for the high cost of prescription pharmaceuticals is because
the tremendous challenge of developing and streamlining chemical
syntheses.
The only way to widen these
bottlenecks is to develop new reaction
chemistry that can quickly produce molecular complexity, and to prove
their effectiveness by synthesizing complex molecules such as natural
products and molecules designed to have interesting biological
properties and functions.
Our work focuses on the idea of
using Strain
as a Design Principle in Synthesis. The basic concept is
that high energy molecules have unusual— and therefore interesting—
reactivity. Our goal is to use the ‘thermodynamic currency’ of
strained molecules and use it to solve fundamental and complex problems
in synthesis.
An organic
approach
to materials chemistry
Our approach to materials chemistry
is to use sophisticated design
principles and reaction chemistry to prepare new types of
materials. Our goal is to control the shapes of new materials
with the same level of precision that we exercise when controlling the
stereochemical relationships in a natural products synthesis.
