Synthetic Methods in Biotechnology

The course aims to provide the student with elements to understand and evaluate several modern chemical technologies applied to biotechnological and pharmaceutical processes, meanwhile providing also the basic theoretical notions to understand the nature and the impact of such technologies.
The students will take advantage of this course, by gathering a general perspective regarding the role of synthetic organic chemistry in biotechnological and pharmaceutical research. Among the five selected applications dealt with in the course (protective groups in organic synthesis, solid-phase synthesis, combichem & natural products, rational design in drug discovery, and research phases of pharmaceutical projects), the student will get information about modern trends for each topic, and will become knowledgeable about their scope, their advantages and their limitations.
The program is divided into five modules, all dealing with advanced synthetic methodologies useful in biotechnology. A first model deals with protective groups in organic synthesis, and is preparing the student to the second module - solid-phase synthesis. The third module deals with the identification, isolation, dereplication and structural determination of natural products from prokaryots, lower and higher eukaryots; the use of natural products in pharmaceutical research, and their usefulness as core scaffolds for the synthesis of natural products-inspired combinatorial libraries is also covered. The fourth module deals with methodologies and principles for the rational design of biologically active molecules, while the last module covers the research process used in drug discovery - target identification and validation, lead discovery and lead optimization.
A large number of detailed examples are used in each module, so to provide a self-explanatory tool to judge the relevance of the topics covered in the SMB course.