Welcome.
Selectivity is the problem we work on, and it takes two forms: a synthetic route must form one bond among many that are chemically indistinguishable, and a drug candidate must inhibit one enzyme among a dozen built from the same catalytic parts. Our laboratory pursues both. We design and synthesize small molecules that discriminate among the histone deacetylase isoforms — HDAC6, HDAC10, HDAC11 — and among other enzymes implicated in cancer and neurodegeneration, and we develop the synthetic methodology, particularly for nitrogen heterocycles and complex alkaloids, that makes such molecules reachable in the first place. Each half of the program keeps supplying the other with problems worth solving.