MIT chemists have developed a new way to synthesize complex molecules that were originally isolated from plants and could hold potential as antibiotics, analgesics, or cancer drugs. These compounds, known as oligocyclotryptamines, consist of multiple tricyclic substructures called cyclotryptamine, fused together by carbon–carbon bonds. Only small quantities of these compounds are naturally available, and synthesizing them in the lab has proven difficult.
The MIT team came up with a way to add tryptamine-derived components to a molecule one at a time, in a way that allows the researchers to precisely assemble the rings and control the 3D orientation of each component as well as the final product. For many of these compounds, there hasn't been enough material to do a thorough review of their potential. I'm hopeful that having access to these compounds in a reliable way will enable us to do further studies.
" Mohammad Movassaghi, Study Senior Author and Professor, Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology In addition to allowing scientists to synthesize oligocyclotryptamines found in plants, this approach could also be used to generate new variants that may have even better medicinal properties, or molecular probes that can help to reveal their mechanism of action. Tony Scott PhD '23 is the lead author of the paper, which appears in the Journal of the American Chemical Society . Fusing rings Oligocyclotryptamines belong to a class of molecules called alkaloids -; nitroge.