Figure 1: Different research activities pursued at Bio-Organic Chemistry Division.

Carbohydrates play important roles in many biological processes, rendering the development of efficient synthetic methods toward carbohydrates crucial for glycobiology research. Some of the novel methodologies carried out at CSIR-IIIM Jammu are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Some of the representative examples of compounds synthesized using glycoscience

Drug delivery involves the development of polymeric systems to carry small molecular weight therapeutics at specific sites by passive targeting as well as active targeting. The prerequisite for such polymeric therapeutics is to release the drug at targeted sites with maximizes the drug release by pH or enzyme-based degradation. Further, Diversity Oriented Synthesis (DOS) of natural products were being carried out for the discovery of novel, biologically interesting small molecules. Some representative examples are shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Medicinal chemistry of some drug molecules

Biotransformation has received increasing attention for the synthesis of compounds of pharmaceutical importance. It has several distinctive features as compared to chemical catalysis due to its non-toxic nature, high chemoselectivity and regioselectivity.

Enzymatic Hydrolysis of Aldol product of Kojic acid isolated from Aspergillus Flavus as given in figure 4.

 Figure 4: Enzymatic resolution of compound 4a using commercially available enzymes.

The biotransformation of amino acids into biologically active molecules are challenges faced to implement the basic scientific knowledge to Chemical Process Research and Development (CPR&D) of generic drugs targeted for global market is getting complex like never before due to continuously emerging patent landscape, increased competition, regulatory problems and the cost pressure. The “need for innovation” scenario is more “driven and dictated by Intellectual Property (IP), which has thereby compelled scientists to think out of the box to overcome these challenges. For a successful drug discovery, it is necessary that a drug should be affordable where the route of synthesis is novel, straightforward and environmentally benign. development of new synthetic methodologies as well as process development of three key but expensive lifesaving drugs namely Dapagliflozin (antidiabetic), Sofosbuvir (anti-HCV) , Delamanid (anti-TB) and EIDD-1931 (anti-COVID19).

Development of novel methodologies using photoredox catalyst to synthesize medicinally important compounds are one of major thrust area and some of the representative examples are shown below