Chemists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have invented the first practical, scalable method for synthesizing jiadifenolide, a plant-derived molecule that may have powerful brain-protecting properties.
Finding a good way to synthesize jiadifenolide has been a goal of chemists around the world since the compound was discovered in 2009. Preliminary studies have hinted that it might be useful in protecting brain cells from neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and perhaps other neurological conditions including stroke and traumatic brain injury. But it is very difficult to obtain useful quantities of jiadifenolide from plants, and the synthesis methods reported in the past few years also have low yields.
"Prior synthetic routes to jiadifenolide yield a few milligrams, suitable mainly for cell-culture experiments, but with our new method someone could make the gram to kilogram quantities needed for tests in animals and humans," said Ryan A. Shenvi, associate professor at TSRI.
The feat by Shenvi and his team, described in an Advance Online Publication in Nature Chemistry on June 15, 2015, may therefore lead to the development, years from now, of a jiadifenolide-derived drug.
The achievement also demonstrates the increasing power of synthetic chemistry to produce the potentially valuable molecules found in nature on large scale at low cost.
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