sample thesis title with a concise and accurate description

product extracts. The last couple years has seen an increase to approximately 1000 new
marine natural products with varying biological profiles being isolated per annum. 22
This diversity in marine natural products may provide future drug candidates.
However, for any compound to achieve drug status 23 several major hurdles have to be
overcome. It can be shown that synthetic organic chemistry plays a major role in each stage
of development, from benchtop to bedside.
1.2 Synthesis as an Aid to Structure Elucidation
The compounds first identified by marine natural product chemists were “low
hanging fruit” that were present in large quantities in the source organisms, and were easily
separable from other constituents in the extracts. This was a direct result of limited separation
and spectroscopic technologies available in the early days of marine natural product
discovery. As techniques for chemical identification became more sophisticated, smaller
amounts of material could provide the necessary data needed to elucidate a chemical
structure.
A modern example is the macrolide phorboxazole A (1.9) that was isolated 24 from the
marine sponge Phorbas sp. collected in Western Australia (Figure 1.4). Phorboxazole A (1.9)
(95.1 mg) was isolated in the mid 1990’s at masses sufficient for characterization. A number
of smaller peaks in the HPLC trace (0.78-3.0 mg) of the major metabolite (1.9) alluded to
additional compounds. However, the NMR technology at the time was too insensitive for
characterization of these minor components. Fifteen years would pass before phorbaside A 25
(1.10) and muironolide A 26 (1.11) were characterized (Figure 1.4).
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