Emma Simmons

Natural products possess structural diversity and biological activities unmatched by small molecules. Topological complexity, and dense oxygenation patterns confer natural products with a unique role in drug discovery and target identification, in contrast to planar and sparingly functionalized traditional drug molecules. Divergent synthetic strategies to these complex targets would allow for modification and derivatization of the core skeletons both en route to and of the final targets. My project focuses on the development of synthetic strategies to access diverse norcembranoid diterpenoids which will enable elucidation of their biological targets with potential to inform future small molecule drug discovery campaigns.