Chemistry and Chemical Biology Research Professor Bill Scott wanted to help Ukrainian students and scientists continue their education and research while living under bomb threats and the conditions of war. He read Ukrainian chemistry Professor Oleksandr Grygorenko’s blog discussing the terror and disruption the war had on his personal life and the life of his students. When Prof. Scott read his research and review papers, he realized Oleksandr and he shared very similar scientific interests and understanding. Prof. Scott reached out to him to see how he could help. Prof. Grygorenko said he had a strong desire to continue educating students and maintaining, even under the threat of bombs, as much of a normal student life as possible. He invited Prof. Scott to present three Zoom lectures to students at Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv, with links to scientists at Enamine, a leading world-wide supplier of research reagents and synthesized molecules. In November Prof. Scott presented three live lectures to Kyiv via Zoom. Prof. Grygorenko recorded them and made them available on his YouTube channel.
The first lecture, titled “The Drug Discovery Process: Some Short Stories,” was an overview of the drug discovery process, illustrated with examples from natural products, small molecule synthesis, peptides and proteins.
The second lecture “Combinatorial Chemistry and Solid-Phase Synthesis” discussed approaches to drug discovery that utilize combinatorial chemistry enabled by solid-phase (resin-bound) synthetic organic chemistry. These two methodologies were part of Dr. Scott’s expertise when he was at Lilly and it enables the rapid synthesis of large collections of molecules for drug discovery. Creating large virtual catalogs of molecules available through this approach, and synthesizing molecules selected from these catalogs is a strength of both IUPUI’s Distributed Drug Discovery (D3) program as well as the Enamine, a company based in Kyiv, Ukraine.
Prof. Scott’s third lecture was postponed multiple times due to bomb alerts in Kyiv. It was finally presented November 22 and discussed the Distributed Drug Discovery (D3) program which he created at IUPUI in 2003. D3 seeks to educate global students in synthesis and biology while they collaborate on international projects to find drugs for neglected and infectious diseases. This work is made possible by providing students with simple, reproducible synthetic procedures enabling the quality construction of large virtual libraries. These libraries can be analyzed computationally (or through institutional expertise) to identify the best synthetic targets for a particular disease. The selected molecules are then synthesized by globally distributed student chemists using inexpensive equipment. Prof. Scott gave examples of D3 implementation at schools in Poland, Spain, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Mexico, as well as multiple schools in the continental USA. The most recent D3 project makes potential drugs to treat Covid-19. It was just piloted this fall by undergraduate C344 organic chemists at IUPUI. At the end of the lecture he proposed students at Taras Shevchenko National University become part of an international collaboration on this Covid-19 project.
When the war ends Prof. Scott plans to travel by train from Poland to Kyiv to meet in person Prof. Grygorenko and his students and help Ukraine rebuild through participation in the D3 program.