Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Development Of Betulinic Acid Triazole Conjugates As Potential Anti-Cancer Agents, Gayathri Jampana

Theses and Dissertations

Betulin and betulinic acid are pentacyclic triterpenoid natural product isolated from the bark of birch trees. While betulin is abundantly available in the bark, betulinic acid is present in scarce quantities in nature. However, betulinic acid can be conveniently synthesized from betulin via simple redox manipulations. Betulinic acid shows selective cytotoxicity profile against cancer cells in vitro while being relatively safe for normal cells. One of the challenges for the clinical development of betulinic acid is its lack of aqueous solubility. The three key structural features of betulin/betulinic acid that have been routinely exploited for structural modifications to enhance their …

Efforts Towards The Discovery Of Novel Methods For The Synthesis Of Pharmacologically Relevant Molecular Scaffolds, Graham Joseph Haun

Theses and Dissertations

With the introductions of pharmaceuticals into modern day society many people have been using them to improve their lives. Due to this high increase in demand along with the ever-growing concern of environmental impact pharmaceutical companies have been pressed to synthesis new and existing drugs at a higher rate. This increased rate can cause low yield drugs or have a heavy environmental impact. As the use of pharmaceuticals becomes more widespread the need for greener and simpler organic synthesis methods to make these pharmaceuticals becomes more needed.

Herein is reported the methodological development of different pharmacologically relevant scaffolds. This work …

Information Foraging Through The Analysis Of Semantic Network Topology, Phillip J. Dibona

Theses and Dissertations

Information seekers are posed with multiple challenges in gathering an unbiased and comprehensive body of information. The costs of analyzing documents often drive searches toward a small subset of documents. Additionally, modern search tools may reinforce the confirmation bias of users by providing only those documents that closely match their search query. The end result is a decision or hypothesis that is ill-considered and substantiated by potentially biased information. Information seekers need an information foraging tool that can help them explore the document corpus to find relevant topics and text snippets, while finding the hidden information that may be buried …

Preparation Of Polymeric Materials From Bio-Renewable Sources, Jason Douglas Smith

Theses and Dissertations

The focus of this project was to develop methodologies for the preparation of novel polymeric materials from bio-renewable sources. In order to complete this task we needed (a) unfettered access to bio-based materials and ways to convert them to value needed chemicals, as well as, (b) reaction protocols that would allow greater diversity during the synthesis of polymeric compounds so as to affect the properties of these materials.

Our research group has a background in converting plant-based materials like cellulose into value added chemicals employing catalytic reactions. The polymerization of these monomers was then conducted utilizing the Baylis-Hillman reaction. The …

Semi-Synthesis Of A Novel Library Of Alkaloids As Potential Selective Analgesics, Brittany M. Gallagher

Theses and Dissertations

Semi-synthetic compounds are an important part of the therapeutic drug discovery process. The goals of the project were to synthesize different generations of matrine analogues in order to gain many opportunities to manipulate the core structure. The long-term goal was, by manipulating the structure, the possibility to increase the biological activity of the original compound while also decreasing the toxicity. The first-generation matrine analogue allows for a synthesis similar to the Striker reaction producing aminonitriles. An alkyne coupling reaction was also possible with the modification, producing propargyl-amines. Both of the reactions resulted in the addition of a triple bond substituent …