Today, February 6th, CiQUS PhD student Noel Sayar Insua has defended his Doctoral Thesis, entitled “Estudios de la Reacción de Metátesis de Ciclación de Dieninos Aplicada a la Síntesis de Taxanos”. His work has been supervised by Prof. Juan R. Granja Guillán, from the CiQUS and the Organic Chemistry Department at the USC.
This thesis is focused on one of the most relevant anti cancer drugs, the Taxol, for the treatment of ovarian, breast and lung, bladder, prostate, melanoma, esophageal, and other types of solid tumor cancers. This is a natural product extracted form the American yews (Tejo), and one of the first anticancer drugs that target tubulin. Unfortunately, this drugs have several side effects derived from low selectivity, solubility and appearance of drug resistance phenomena. Additionally, this compounds has a very complex structure that make vry difficult the synthesis of novel analogues with improved properties.
In the thesis is described a new and simple method for the preparation of analogues of this compounds. The strategy, in which several reaction take place sequentially are called cascade process, allows the preparation of its complex carbocyclic skeleton in only one synthetic step, with a great selectivity.