Welcome to the Turlington Research Group!  Our research focuses on organic methodology and medicinal chemistry.

Organic Methodology:  Our organic methodology projects span two broad areas: 1) Synthetic methods to prepare useful molecular structures commonly found in pharmaceuticals. Our goal is to help reduce the synthetic limitations that impede medicinal chemists from investigating novel molecular architectures in drug molecules.  Current work in our group explores the development of methodology for the synthesis of chiral amines and chiral aza-heterocycles.  2) New methods for the synthesis of polycarbonate polymers. Aliphatic polycarbonates are being explored for a variety of biomedical applications as the polycarbonate framework is biocompatible and biodegradable.  For example, polycarbonate polymers have been explored for drug delivery. In collaboration with Dr. Chris Turlington of Hope College, our labs design new synthetics methods to prepare and polymerize functionalized cyclic trimethylene carbonate (TMC) monomers using organocatalyzed ring opening polymerization (OROP).

Medicinal Chemistry: In collaboration with Dr. Shaun Stauffer of the Cleveland Clinic our lab is working to design and synthesize inhibitors of the 3-chymotrypsin-like cysteine protease (3CLpro) that is essential for the severe acute respiratory syndrome-associated coronavirus (SARS-CoV) life cycle. By inhibiting 3CLpro the viral life cycle is halted which reduces the duration and severity of the viral infection. The FDA-approved coronavirus medication Paxlovid contains a 3CLpro inhibitor (nirmatrelvir) and our research aims to design improved 3CLpro inhibitors. In the past our lab has collaborated with Professor Jun Yin of Georgia State University to develop proteolysis targeting chimeras (PROTACs) targeting the Aurora A and Aurora B kinases that our overexpressed in the cancer neuroblastoma. We have also collaborated with Professor Stephen Aller of the University of Alabama, Birmingham to explore the synthesis of new drug-like molecules for the treatment of Cystic Fibrosis.