3,6-Bis(methylthio)-1,2,4,5-tetrazine

The inverse electron demand Diels-Alder reactions of electron-deficient heterocycles are significant cycloaddition reactions for the total synthesis of natural products containing highly substituted and functionalized heteroaromatic ring systems.

As the exploration of the properties of complex natural products becomes increasingly more sophisticated with the technological advances being made in their screening and evaluation and as structural details of their interaction with biological targets becomes more accessible, the importance and opportunities for providing unique solutions to complex biological problems has grown. The Boger Lab addresses these challenging problems by understanding the complex solutions and subtle design elements that nature has provided in the form of a natural product and work to extend the solution through rational design elements to provide more selective, more efficacious, or more potent agents designed specifically for the problem or target under investigation. The resulting efforts have reduced many difficult or intractable synthetic challenges to manageable problems providing an approach not only to the natural product but one capable of simple extrapolation to a series of structural analogs with improved selectivity and efficacy.