As AIDS has become an increasing public health concern in Thailand, antiviral agents are much needed. However, due to the high cost of classical drug development, computational chemistry has been employed in aiding the primary structure screening prior to synthesis and biological evaluations. Following the in silico screening, a number of nevirapine derivatives have been proposed as good lead compounds. Nevirapine is a known anti-reverse transcriptase (RT) agent. Development of these derivatives as drugs is extensively studied. Structurally diverse library of nevirapine derivatives are the subject of our research, and efficient routes toward these compounds are currently developed and are the focus of our programme.

     Our interest also includes synthetic routes for some bioactive oxygen heterocycles such as wrighthiadione, coumestan, and diospyrol. Wrighthiadione, a natural product isolated from Wrighthia tomentosa has been shown to display anti-HIV activity by inhibiting HIV-1 reverse transcriptase (HIV-1 RT). Diospyrol is an example of a dimeric naphthol isolated from Diospyros mollis, locally known as Ma-Kluea. Its use as anthelminthic agent has been documented. Michellamines are a group of compounds having diospyrol as their core appended with an isoquinoline unit, collectively known as dimeric naphthylisoquinoline alkaloid. Michellamines were reported to possess anti-HIV property.

     As a part of our research interest in developing synthetic methodologies, we have expanded the horizon of our programme into the area of organometallic chemistry and its application in organic synthesis. Organometallic reactions are powerful tools in developing and devising novel organic reactions as they represent a new frontier in catalysis and reaction selectivity. Currently, we have successfully applied organopalladium, organotin, organoboron, organolithium, organocopper, and organomagnesium to a number of organic reactions, which lead to novel synthetic methodologies, as well as structural diversity of the products. Besides organometallic chemistry, the synthetic utility of other reagents, such as hypervalent iodines, is actively pursued.

     We have also used microwave irradiation to increase the yield and reduce the reaction time of these organometallic reactions based on “Green Chemistry”. Various synthetic compounds, such as biaryl compounds, cyclic lactone and lactam systems, have been studied to produce a greater number of bioactive compounds.