Synthesis of conolidine

The research group of Michael A. Tarselli at the Scripps Research Institute in California developed a new synthetic drug targeted towards pain relief. The natural product conolidine of the bark of Tabernaemontana divaricata (crepe jasmine) has served as a model for the drug. Conolidine is used in traditional Asian medicine as an anti-inflammatory substance applied to wounds, against toothpain and cancer.

Commonly used drugs for those disorders are several opiates, which exhibit many side effects from unpleasant to lethal. The new drug based on synthetic conolidine did not show any side effects in a mouse model, which makes is a favorite for further development.

If your goal is to create similar synthetic compounds based on the engineering of a natural protein template, Entelechon can help: We specialize in gene optimization and protein engineering. Our DNA library service can help you to quickly produce and scan protein variants of a target gene, and our bioinformatics unit is happy to help with target sequence retrieval and analysis. If you are interested, please contact us for an in-depth discussion with our head of laboratory, Dr. Iris Kobl, or Markus Fischer who leads the bioinformatics team.

The full article can be acquired at: http://www.nature.com/nchem/journal/v3/n6/full/nchem.1050.html