Organic Research

"Our position at the tip of Africa puts organic chemistry at Rhodes University in an important context. On the one hand we have access to enormous bio-diversity both on land and in the ocean. This facilitates exciting research in the isolation and characterisation of natural products, particularly those from marine sources.

On the other hand, we find ourselves doing synthetic chemistry of heterocyclic compounds within the context of HIV-1, tuberculosis and malaria. Consequently we concentrate our efforts on developing heterocyclic organic compounds with medicinal potential which show some effectiveness against these three disease targets. This work is done in collaboration with the Centre for Chemico and Biomedicinal research at Rhodes University, involving the expertise of colleagues in Biochemistry, Microbiology and Pharmacy. We focus on synthetic methodologies including the Baylis Hillman reaction, Fischer carbenes and catalytic methods, and have access to a full array of analytical techniques including NMR, IR, and elemental analysis.”

Please contact Dr Klein for further enquiries  (r.klein@ru.ac.za)