sample thesis title with a concise and accurate description

Abstract
Natural products play a central role in drug discovery. The Andersen lab focuses its
efforts on the isolation and structure elucidation of compounds from the marine environment.
Many of these compounds possess biological activity, and often their total synthesis is
undertaken, to provide structure-activity relationship (SAR) studies for new pharmacophores,
and to provide material to probe in vivo biological effects. When possible, small molecule
probes are designed based on the structure of the natural product, to provide insight into the
mechanism of interaction between the active compound and its biological target. Several
projects probing the biological activities of natural products and their analogues by synthesis
are detailed in this thesis
The second chapter describes the construction of water-soluble activators of SHIP1, a
phosphatase that is a negative regulator of the PI3K signal transduction pathway in
hematopoietic cells. The structure of a known SHIP1 activator (2.18) was used to develop the
water-soluble analogues 2.20 and 2.42 in order to enhance the drug-like properties of 2.18.
The third chapter describes the total synthesis of two novel marine natural products,
(S)-niphatenone A (3.23) and B (3.35). Both compounds inhibit transcriptional activity in
prostate cancer cells. Their total synthesis was completed to verify their proposed structures
and to supply material for biological testing. Several analogues of (R)-niphatenone B (3.31)
were constructed providing a clear SAR for the natural product.
The fourth chapter describes a terpenoid natural product 4.1, which was found to be
an antagonist of the androgen receptor. Using lead compound 4.1, a semisynthetic SAR study
was completed and it was determined that analogue 4.4 has enhanced potency relative to 4.1.
Synthetic attempts to construct 4.4 analogues by an epoxide-initiated cascade are described.
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