The Department of Chemistry will host an Open House on Thursday, August 24, from 2:30-4:00 p.m. in the breezeway between the iSTEM-1 and iSTEM-2 buildings. If you've ever considered majoring in Chemistry or adding it as a minor, or are simply curious about what UGA Chemistry has to offer, this is the event for you! 

Offerings at the Open House include:

The high prevalence of aromatics in natural products and potential drug candidates makes them intriguing candidates for continued development of C-H functionalization reactions that proceed with high positional selectivity. Achieving site-selectivity can be a steep challenge as when there is a lack of appropriate directing groups or substitution patterns, more than one product isomer is commonly produced. Therefore, the development of aromatic C-H functionalization by means of chemo and site-selective activation is of interest. 

The presence of a heteroatom-heteroatom bond is a “structural alert” in medicinal chemistry, of which the hydroxylamine N-O bond, with its bond dissociation energy of 55-65 kcal·mol^-1 and reputation for inherent mutagenicity and genotoxicity, is a pertinent example.^1-3  Due to this broad moratorium, hydroxylamines are overwhelmingly excluded in medicinal chemistry optimization schemes and have thus received little attention from the synthetic chemistry or drug discovery communities.

Strained Heterocyclic Allene systems are an underexplored building block in chemical synthesis, in spite of being known for more than five decades. Recent advances in azacyclic allenes showed inherent axial chirality that can be transferred to cycloaddition products to obtain highly complex polycyclic systems stereoselectively. With the total synthesis of Lissodendoric acid A is demonstrated that cyclic allenes are a powerful tool for complex molecule synthesis.

Ribonucleotide reductases (RNRs) catalyze de novo biosynthesis of deoxynucleotides in almost all organisms that use DNA as their genetic material. They are current drug targets for both cancer and infectious diseases. All RNRs share a common catalytic mechanism initiated by a cysteinyl radical, while the radical generation varies greatly and provides the biochemical basis dividing the RNRs into the three major classes and several subclasses. All class I RNRs contain two subunits, R1 and R2, that are both essential for enzyme activity.

Despite the indispensable role they play in modern society, the pharmaceutical and chemical industries often find themselves contending with a less-than-favorable public image, primarily due to concerns surrounding pollution, accidents, and misinformation. Yet, the advent of “Green Chemistry” offers a glimmer of hope for addressing these challenges by not only minimizing environmental impact but also enhancing the efficiency of production processes.

The evolution of drug delivery systems in the past decades has held great promise for enhancing efficacy of pharmacological agents, however, premature clearance from the circulation, toxic bioaccumulation, and inefficient site-specific delivery are still the major barriers to successful clinical translations. Bioinspired carriers possess natural components similar to the host, and hence are more biocompatible, less toxic, and less immunogenic. Among them, red blood cells (RBCs) possess unique features that make them attractive carriers for drug delivery.