I am currently a graduate student under the supervision of Dr. Lara Malins at Research School or Chemistry. My research interests concentrate on developing new strategies for the rapid synthesis of peptide natural products as well as late-stage modification to enable the synthesis of diverse structural analogues.

Biseokeaniamides A, B and C, structurally novel sterol O-acyltransferase (SOAT) inhibitors, are first linear lipopeptides possessing inhibitory activity against both SOAT isozymes. These heavily N-methylated peptide natural products all possess an intriguing terminal thiazole unit and a short N-terminal lipid chain. This distinctive structure poses challenges to the total synthesis of these compounds since the solid phase peptide synthesis (SPPS) is inefficient and the installation of thiazole is difficult. Our aim is to develop efficient new strategies for synthesis and late-stage modification enabling the development of new SOAT inhibitors for biological testing. A key outcome of this research will be to obtain a more thorough understanding of the mode of action of the biseokeaniamides and to develop isozyme-specific inhibitors capable of selectively targeting SOAT1 over SOAT2.