Overview: Nature provides us with many complex natural products that possess interesting biomedicinal properties. Unfortunately, these sought-after materials are usually isolated in low quantities, making their development into useful medicines difficult and they ought to be produced in the lab. As in the past, natural products continue to provide the inspiration for advancing the field of organic chemistry and drive developments in many areas of science. The overarching goal of research in the Rasapalli lab is to develop facile access to such biologically important complex heterocyclic natural products and their analogs from the earth’s abundant natural building blocks in a greener way. We strive to develop novel chemistry inspired by the framework of natural products for applications in total synthesis, diverted total synthesis, and to train UMass Dartmouth’s chemistry students. We view such studies as the fundamental contributions that, in the longer term and in conjunction with other developments in the field of synthesis, can be brought to bear on more complex and biologically important natural products, for our studies will result in fundamental new knowledge by (i) providing new annulation methods and strategies for the assembly of complex architecture (ii) providing further materials that will allow us to refine our understanding of their biomedicinal properties (iii) providing means to the total synthesis of targets allowing for their structural and conformational assignments. The projects underway in the lab can be grouped under three themes:

1. Method development              2. Total Synthesis               3. Medicinal Chemistry