Pharmachemie

1) The screening of agro-industrial crop plants and agro-industrial waste products for abundantly available terpenes that can serve as starting material for the production of useful compounds for flavours, fragrances, pharmaceutical intennediates and biocontrol agents (pheromones). 2) The investigation of useful, industrial applicable, isolation methods for selected terpenes. 3) Target oriented research for industrial useful products from terpenes. 4) Explorative synthetic research starting from abundantly available terpenes for the synthesis of othe interrnediates and other useful compounds. 5) The investigation of the biosynthesis of terpenes and eventual the possibility for their biotechnc production. 6) Phytochemical research towards new bioactive terpenes. 7) Publication of the results of this research in international well known chemical journals, which will the attention to these chiral terpenes and thus stimulate their use and application.

This project will bring together the producer, the university researcher and the potential industrial abundantly available chiral terpenes. It will stimulate terpenen chemistry in Europe and contribute to strong network of interested laboratories and industries, from which inovative new developments may be expected.The academic research laboratories involved, all posses extensive specialistic knowh isolation, synthetic conversion and physiological activities of terpenoid, natural products. The starting plant material can be produced by agriculture it may be collected from nature or it can be a waste product from industrial processes based on natural starting materials. In tyhis way new scources of basic materials will be made accessible. These "green" agricultural natural products are a renewable source of starting materials for the production of useful products for the industry The chiral natural precursors that have been used most abundantly as starting material for synthesis are sugars, oc-amino acids and terpenes. Within the group of terpenes, the monoterpenes have attracted by far the most attention, not many sesqui- and diterpenes are used in this field. One of the reasons is that availability in pure form in large quantities is not widespread, a second reason is that not many examples are known to illustrate their use as starting material. This project will contribute and extend these possibilities of sesqui- and diterpenes significantly and makes these compounds accessible for industrial exploitation. New target oriented and explorative synthetic procedures starting from terpenes will be developed Industrially feasible isolation procedures for sesqui- and diterpenes from their natural biological matrices will be investigated and phytochemical research will be carried out to discover new compounds with interesting biological activity. The teipenes that will be investigated as chiral starting rnaterial are carvone, aromadendrane, guaiol, santonin, labdanolic acid and related labdanes, ingenanes and taxanes, and eventually other terpenes when they will be discovered during the project.The sesquiterpenes that will be investigated belong to the classes of the germacranes, the eudesmanes, the guaianes, the lactaranes, the drimanes, and the aromadendranes; the diterpenes that will be investigated are members of the classes of the labdanes, clerodanes, ingenanes and taxanes. Target orientated synthesis will be carried out towards the synthesis of Ambrox(R) other flavour compounds and paclitaxel.