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Yoshito Kishi

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description Yoshito Kishi Overview

Yoshito Kishi (born 1937) is a Japanese-American organic chemist who served as the Morris Loeb Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University. He is known for the total syntheses of palytoxin, one of the most complex natural products completed, and halichondrin B, whose structure informed the anticancer drug eribulin. He co-developed the Nozaki-Hiyama-Kishi reaction, a chromium-mediated carbon–carbon coupling, and a universal NMR database method for stereochemical assignments. He received the Perkin Medal from the Royal Society of Chemistry in 1997.

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What is palytoxin and why is Yoshito Kishi's total synthesis of it significant?

Palytoxin is one of the most toxic and structurally complex non-protein natural products ever characterized, with a molecular formula of C129H223N3O54. Yoshito Kishi's total synthesis of palytoxin at Harvard University is widely regarded as one of the most ambitious achievements in the history of organic synthesis.

What is halichondrin B and what drug came from Kishi's work on it?

Halichondrin B is a complex natural product isolated from marine sponges that Kishi synthesized at Harvard. A simplified synthetic analog of halichondrin B, eribulin (marketed as Halaven by Eisai), became an FDA-approved anticancer drug for metastatic breast cancer based on Kishi's structural and synthetic work.

What is the Nozaki-Hiyama-Kishi reaction?

The Nozaki-Hiyama-Kishi (NHK) reaction is a chromium-mediated carbon-carbon bond-forming reaction developed in collaboration with Hiroyuki Nozaki and Tamejiro Hiyama. The reaction couples allylic or vinyl halides with aldehydes under mild conditions and is named after all three chemists.

Where does Yoshito Kishi work?

Yoshito Kishi has been the Morris Loeb Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University. Born in 1937 in Japan, he joined the Harvard faculty and built one of the world's leading research groups in complex natural product total synthesis.

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