Laboratory Manager/Administrator: Roel Torres

Andrew G. Myers graduated from MIT in 1981 with a Bachelor of Science degree. He was introduced to chemical research as an undergraduate in the laboratory of Professor William R. Roush, and went on to study with Professor E.J. Corey from 1981-1986 at Harvard University, both as a graduate student and then briefly as a postdoctoral researcher.

Myers began his independent academic career at Caltech (1986), where he was Assistant, Associate, and then Full Professor (1994). In 1998, he moved to the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University, served as Chair of the Department from 2007-2010, and is currently Amory Houghton Professor of Chemistry.

Professor Myers' research program involves the synthesis and study of complex molecules of importance in biology and human medicine. His group has developed laboratory synthetic routes to a broad array of complex natural products, including the ene-diyne antibiotics neocarzinostatin chromophore, dynemicin A, N1999A2, and kedarcidin chromophore, undertakings greatly complicated by the chemical instability of all members of the class. His laboratory developed the first practical synthetic route to the tetracycline antibiotics, allowing for the synthesis of more than three thousand fully synthetic analogs (compounds inaccessible by semi-synthesis: chemical modification of natural products) by a scalable process. A portfolio of clinical candidates for the treatment of infectious diseases, all fully synthetic tetracycline analogs, are currently in development at Tetraphase Pharmaceuticals, a company founded by Myers. In addition, the Myers' laboratory has developed short, practical and scalable synthetic routes to the saframycin, cytochalasin, stephacidin B-avrainvillamide, and trioxacarin classes of natural antiproliferative agents, in each case by the modular assembly of simple components of similar synthetic complexity. His group has reported synthetic routes to the natural products epoxybasmenone, cyanocycline, terpestacin, salinosporamides, and cortistatins A, J, K, and L. Increasingly, the Myers' laboratory is dedicated to the development of highly convergent synthetic pathways that (1) provide practical, scalable solutions for the construction of molecular classes multiplicatively expanded by (2) incorporation of modular variations.

Myers and his students have also developed numerous reagents and procedures of general utility in the construction of complex molecules. These include the development of methodology for the preparation of highly enantiomerically enriched ketones, aldehydes, alcohols, carboxylic acids, organofluorine compounds, α-amino acids, and molecules containing quaternary carbon centers using pseudoephenamine and pseudoephedrine as chiral auxiliaries, a method for the reductive deoxygenation of alcohols that does not involve metal hydride reagents, methods for the stereoselective synthesis of alkenes from sulfonyl hydrazones, a stereospecific synthesis of allenes from propargylic alcohols, a 1,3-reductive transposition of allylic alcohols, a silicon-directed aldol addition reaction, a method for the reductive coupling of aldehydes and allylic alcohols, the discovery of the powerful reductant lithium amidotrihydroborate, the use α-amino aldehydes in synthesis, methods for the synthesis and transformation of diazo compounds, a highly diversifiable method for the synthesis of isoquinolines, as well as others. In addition they have identified and studied transformations of fundamental importance in chemistry such as the allene-ene-yne→α,3-dehydrotoluene, 1,6-didehydrotolu-ene[10]-annulene→1,5-naphthalenediyl, and neocarzinostatin biradical-forming cycloaromatization reactions, as well as the decarboxylative palladiation reaction.