Toward Digital Native Chemistry: Case Study of Carbohydrates and Peptides
Nicola Pohl, PhD
Professor and Joan & Marvin Carmack Chair
Department of Chemistry
Indiana University
Hosts: Jiaoyang Jiang & Weiping Tang
The promise of high throughput automated synthesis to produce diverse compound libraries for drug discovery has been severely restricted by the range of chemical methods amenable to automation. The result is that libraries across the world look very similar and generally lack complexity. One problem is that synthetic chemists rarely have ready access to automation and still use equipment with a century or more of history; reactions are developed manually and then attempts are made to transfer these to a robotics platform. Another issue is that chemists have historically relied on phase-changes to drive reactions forward—a problem where automated liquid handling is the norm.
This talk will discuss these issues in developing digital native chemistry in the context of creating the first solution-phase-based automated oligosaccharide synthesis platform and tackling the synthesis of glycopeptides. This talk will also introduce 1) an Internet-of-Things-based modular low-cost framework to build automated synthesizers (including an automated peptoid and peptide synthesizer) for reaction development in batch and flow and 2) a new paradigm for collaborations with synthetic chemists.