Press Release - For Immediate Release - December 8, 2009

National Science Foundation awards MedChem Partners grant to develop novel chemistry for modification of natural products 

Medford, MA, Dec. 8, 2009– MedChem Partners LLC announced today the successful acquisition of funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support the development of a broad based chemical technology for the modification of natural products. This phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant will be used to further the  development of a  novel single step chemical transformation that can be used to modify the structure of natural products economically and efficiently.

Natural products have long been a rich source of therapeutics and leads for the discovery of new drugs.  Unfortunately, the complexity which makes these compounds attractive as potential drug candidates also makes their synthesis and derivatization quite challenging.  Recently a variety of modern techniques have been described which allow the generation of semi-synthetic analogs under mild, selective conditions. MedChem Partners is developing several of these techniques for the direct modification of certain natural products. This technology allows for direct, one-pot modification of natural products and direct access to analogs, without the lengthy and expensive task of synthesizing the natural product from scratch.  It will also alleviate the need for tedious protection/deprotection schemes as the current chemistry can function on unprotected natural products.

In addition MedChem Partners’ approach will allow for the direct modification of the core, or backbone, of the natural product.  This chemistry will enable a generation of completely new and novel core structures which cannot currently be obtained by any other means. The end result is that new and novel molecules will become available which are patentable and which possess novel biological activity. This is a broad based chemical technology which can be applied across multiple therapeutic areas, and has the potential to speed up the discovery and production of novel biologically active compounds to serve as leads in the drug discovery pipeline.

For more Information:

Steven Riesinger,
Co-Founder
MedChem Partners LLC
200 Boston Ave. Suite 4750
Medford, MA 02155
Phone: (781) 396-0476 ext 1
Email: sriesinger@medchempartners.com