Organic chemistry is a complex field with many functional uses; the research in this arena can make life-saving treatments possible, change how we think about food production, and even be applied to agrochemical treatments. While this field of study may go over the heads of many, for Dr. Sailu Munnuri, organic chemistry has always made sense. He successfully obtained a master's degree in organic chemistry from Osmania University and went on to secure a Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology - Hyderabad, India.
During his Ph.D. studies, Dr. Munnuri worked alongside Dr. Srivari Chandrasekhar who is a prominent figure in India's government, working as the secretary of the Department of Science and Technology. Dr. Munnuri spent his Ph.D. conducting a multi-step synthesis of galantamine, rhazinal, a bioactive natural product, and its unknown B-ring carbamate. Uncovering new components and products within the organic chemistry field opened many doors for Dr. Munnuri, but eventually, he decided to take a role at Clearsynth Research Center in India.
At Clearsynth, Dr. Munnuri was the senior research associate responsible for preparing and identifying a variety of pharmaceutical impurities. Even the slightest impurities can have major implications and negative health benefits when present in a medicine or treatment used by humans. Treating cancer, diabetes, hypertension, HIV infections, and other diseases is a challenging task that requires total pharmaceutical accuracy. Committed to making healthcare outcomes better for patients down the line, Dr. Munnuri successfully synthesized 14 drug impurities in less than a year while working at Clearsynth.
It wasn't long before Dr. Munnuri was contacted by Professor John Falck's lab at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center where he now works as an assistant instructor. Because of the opportunity to work with some of the brightest minds in organic chemistry, as well as the fact that the university has produced seven different alumni or faculty members that went on to receive Nobel Prizes, it was an easy choice for Dr. Munnuri to accept the university's initial offer of a postdoctoral research fellowship.
Working under Professor Falck -- whose work with C-H activation was some of the most advanced at the time -- Dr. Munnuri continued diving into related topics and focusing on novel synthetic methodologies. He studied the development of general and efficient catalytic methods for transition metals catalyzed C-H activations and C-H functionalization. This advanced methodology made it possible for nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon moieties to be introduced in a region-selective and stereo-selective manner into organic molecules.
Transition metal-based chemical reactions play a major role in the pharmaceutical space and the academia space because they make it possible to develop new drugs and serve patients in new ways. Specifically, Dr. Munnuri became an expert in handling transition metals such as dirhodium, copper, and iron-catalyzed synthetic transformations. Known as the most valuable class of reactions in chemistry because of a wide range of applications, easy reaction protocols, and high reproducibility, transition metal-catalyzed activations are becoming even more prominent and valuable thanks to Dr. Munnuri's work.
His C-H activation/C-H functionalization methods introduce unprotected nitrogen moieties into the molecules in the form of aryl amine, cyclic amine and aziridines. More than 75% of drugs approved by the FDA and currently available in the market are nitrogen-containing heterocyclic moieties. When asked about the importance of his methods, he said, "Nitrogen atoms give polarity to the molecules. My methods are used for developing unprotected nitrogen containing moieties in the form of arylamines, cyclic amines and aziridines. Because these kinds of nitrogen moieties are very important due to the fact that they help with the binding of biological molecules like proteins and enzymes. That's why you see an abundance of nitrogen atoms in biologically active compounds, especially in active pharmaceutical ingredients that are used in medicines; they need to interact with biological systems."
On the other hand, his work introduces carbon moieties into the molecules in the form of cyclopropanes that were discovered by the intramolecular creation of a new carbon-carbon bond. Cyclopropyl motif can improve metabolic stability, can be used to improve the in-vivo properties of pharmaceutical agents, and enhance the potency of pharmaceutically relevant molecules over linear alkyl groups. He is also exploring the application of introducing double bonds by carbon insertion. As one of the most important and versatile functional groups, carbon-carbon double bonds are commonly used in the synthesis of materials, drugs, pesticides, and functional group modifications.
Lastly, Dr. Munnuri works on introducing oxygen moieties into the molecules in the form of ether functionalization. Ethers are important functional motifs which are commonly found in a variety of pharmaceutical agents and bioactive natural products. Over 20% of the top 200 small molecule pharmaceuticals and 75% of new chemicals contain at least one ether moiety. Therefore, the development of efficient synthetic methods for etherification is vital for the discovery of biologically interesting agents.
Dr. Munnuri's work is very important for the pharmaceutical industry, drug development, industrial applications, and novel methods of synthetic chemistry for academic purposes. His work has been published three times in a prominent scientific journal i.e. the Journal of the American Chemical Society - which is one of the most prestigious journals in scientific literature today. Dr. Munnuri has also authored works in Organic Letters, Tetrahedron Letters, Tetrahedron, Prostaglandins & Other Lipid Mediators, Frontiers in Neurology, Synthesis, and the International Journal of Pharmaceutical and Chemical Sciences
One of his publications in the Journal of American Chemical Society resulted in Dr. Munnuri being honored with corresponding author because he discovered, designed, developed, and conceptualized the entire work published in JACS-2022. Specifically, he developed the first-time application of O-tosyloximes with dirhodium catalysis which were used for challenging transformations by C-H functionalization to form the construction of complex molecules.
In the future, Dr. Munnuri hopes to develop more novel methodologies using C-H activation and C-H functionalization method transformations. Solving complex problems that wouldn't even begin to make sense to most is impressive, but what Dr. Munnuri is doing has an impact that can't be accurately measured at this time. With the power of Dr. Munnuri, organic chemistry, and the healthcare field, people will get better treatments, tackle diseases with more ease, and live healthier lives overall.
