Overview: In the Rahn Lab we believe good chemistry is beautiful chemistry. Elegant syntheses of impactful therapeutics are made possible by the development of stable, effective, and accessible reagents. In our lab, we develop novel reagents that provide access to previously difficult to install functional-groups for late-stage functionalization in medicinal chemistry and material science. 

Aim 1: Reagent Development - Our group is currently developing biamidine transfer reagents (BTR's) using nitrogen heterocycles as leaving groups. Our goal is to first synthesize crystalline reagents which can then be evaluated for their synthetic utility as a function of substrate, yield, and reaction rate. Additional research efforts will examine conditions favoring catalytic use of heterocyclic leaving groups to synthesize biguanide derivatives from amines and cyanoguanidines. By probing structure, conditions, and synthetic ease we will develop a suite of transfer reagents which can be used to easily develop new therapeutics.

Aim 2: High-throughput screening of drug-like molecules - In parallel our group will evaluate these new reagents for their ability to biamidinate model drug-like molecules with multiple functionalities. This effort will heavily rely on high-throughput synthetic and purification methods to examine multiple BTRs with many substrate molecules. 

 Aim 3: Late-stage functionalization and evaluation of novel therapeutics - After a careful selection of BTR's and drug substrates informed by modeling and function-oriented synthesis, we will begin to evaluate the synthesis and use of new drug molecules.