Synthesis of biologically active natural products using oximes and indoles as starting materials

This research project is focused on synthesizing natural products that have the potential to treat cancer and diabetes, and also using different techniques and methods to find the most effective way of synthesis. The primary starting materials are Oximes (can be made by reacting aldehydes or ketones with hydroxylamine hydrochloride), and Indoles. The idea is that if we can synthesize these natural products we can also manipulate them to some extent by adding different substituent (i.e. benzylation of indoles in the 1 position, alkylation of indoles in the 2 position, and so on).

      One of our techniques include deprotonating the indoles at the desired positions by using bases like NaH or NaBH4, adding substituent with a good leaving group (i.e benzyl chloride), then monitoring the reaction using TLC. After the reaction is complete we separate our product using a column, and then determing/varify the structure using the NMR. Our products are then sent to different medical research center to be tested on cancer and diabetes.