Status of experimental work - month 2

We have now been trying for 2 months to execute on the synthetic work we planned for the diketopiperazine malaria project. There are now 4 students working on this: 2 graduate students Alicia and Khalid, and 2 undergrads James and Brett. And we might get one more undergrad next week.

Things have been progressing slowly since all of these students are new to this type of labwork. And it certainly does not help that our electrospray mass spec and NMR have both been down and will likely continue to be down for a few more months. We have a sweet new 500 MHz NMR getting set up but it will take time for it to be available. Anyone out there in the Philly area want to contribute some NMR time in the interim?

So in the meantime, we'll stick to old school TLC and common orgo sense. We ordered some TLC stains to improve the monitoring of the reactions and will keep at it.