Research

Peptides are made of amino acids and currently used as peptide drugs and supplements. We think that peptides are potentially applicable for the development of catalysts and functional materials. We propose a new field of peptide chemistry.

Highly selective peptide organocatalysts :

Enzymes catalyze reactions with high efficiency and high selectivity under mild conditions in water based on their three dimensional molecular structures. By mimicking such a machinery, we are developing peptide catalysts having specific secondary structures with focusing on regio- or chemoselectivity.

Synthesis of biologically-active compounds by mimicking biosynthetic :

Pathways Living organisms make a variety of bioactive compounds in which many drug / drug candidate molecules are included. Such compounds have already been chemically synthesized, however, the synthetic methods often suffer from problems in safety, cost, and environmental impact. We are developing general synthetic methods for such compounds based on biosynthetic mechanisms.

Development of organic functional materials using azulene :

Azulene is a non-benzenoid aromatic compound having fused five- and seven-membered rings, and is a unique molecule that exhibits a blue color while being a low-molecular hydrocarbon. Azulene also has nucleophilic reactivity at the 1- and 3-positions due to the high electron density on the 5-membered ring moiety. We are developing new organic functional materials using these characteristics.

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