Isomerase Therapeutics

Chemistry

The team at Isomerase has extensive experience of semisynthetic chemical derivatisation of natural products, especially for use in drug discovery and development projects.

Semi-synthesis of natural products presents unique challenges. The low quantities of starting material available early in a programme requires an ability to work on sub-mg scale with sensitive and robust analytical procedures. Natural products semi-synthesis is not the same as total synthesis. Typically, the starting material will have pre-configured functional group arrays and reagent sensitivity. This requires top-down rather than bottom-up synthesis (e.g. total synthesis) and must be complemented with first-class purification skills.

Semi-synthetic chemistry can be used in parallel with biosynthetic engineering to deliver a powerful tool for generating new chemistry. The team at Isomerase often use both methods for generating diversity and understanding mode of action and on- and off-target effects.

Isomerase has extensive experience of semisynthesis especially in combination with bioengineering.