My day in York

Yesterday I went down to York to speak about my work at a postgraduate symposium. There were 12 organic postgrads speaking from various universities in the north and all of us had been through a nomination and selection proceedure. Eleanor and I were representing Durham the event was really eye-opening for me in several ways. Firstly, I'm sad to say that not one person from my group came down with me - I think I was the only person there by themselves. It didn't bother me, but it made me realise just how bad our group is as a group - we work well in the department, but really don't have any contact outside of that which is a shame as almost every other group does and they seem closer because of it. Secondly, apart from Eleanor, me and one of the speakers from York, everyone was working on total synthesis of natural products. These are large complicated chemicals that are made in nature (at the moment the hype is behind stuff made by marine organisms such as coral and sponges). The compound extracted from the natural source might show some potential therapeutic benefits so they are deemed "interesting". Now, for those of you who don't know it is very unlikely that the molecule "as it is" will be at all suitable for use in a drug - there's normally an active part (or pharmacophore) that instills the biological activity into the substance. In spite of this there are lots of research groups that embark on "total syntheses" of the original molecule from smaller commercially available chemicals. The challenge is to reproduce all the complexity nature has put into the molecule using the chemistry we know. It has to be said that a lot of hard work and very elegant chemistry goes into these syntheses - total syntheses often take years and many PhD students before they are complete. However, they really aren't particularly useful - pharmaceutical companies won't touch the routes because of the multiple steps, frequent low yields and far ranging chemicals needed. Frequently, products are formed in exceedingly low yields (one value quoted was 15mg of product - that's not even enough to prove what it is!). I'm now very happy that my PhD is on useful materials. Total synthesis is very good for gaining knowledge of a wide range of techniques, but at the end of the day, you're working towards a well defined goal. With my work I also design the goal as well as the route to it.