Indrajeet Sharma
Associate Professor, Chemistry & BiochemistryStephenson Life Sciences Research Center 2160312-363-9367 isharma at ou dot edu https://indrajeetsharma.com/ Ph.D., Organic Synthesis - Wayne State University, 2006Research:
Our laboratory engages in the synthesis, assessment, and modification of potential therapeutic leads derived from natural products for the treatment of cancer and neurological disorders. To accomplish our goals, we use two complementary approaches: "isolation/semi-synthesis and method development/total synthesis" of natural products to access a library of diverse analogues to study the structure-activity relationships (SAR). To advance our compounds, we are having multidisciplinary collaborations with leading laboratories having combined expertise in natural product isolation, organic synthesis, medicinal chemistry, computational chemistry and molecular pharmacology. We screen our compounds in collaboration with the other labs and at the NIMH Psychoactive Drug Screening Program against 50 different CNS receptors to know their initial binding and functional activity. Our current research project is to identify new natural products based probes to understand kappa-opioid receptor pharmacology in order to develop new therapeutic agents to treat pain, addiction and cocaine abuse.
Selected Publications:
Singh, S. P., Kharel, P., Herndon, D., and Sharma, I. (2026) Photochemically generated sulfenylnitrene unlocks chemoselective activation of conventional thioglycosides for stereocontrolled furanosylations. Angewandte Chemie International Edition 65: e23438.
Kafle, P., Yasuda, S., Mukherjee, R., and Sharma, I. (2026) Sulfenylnitrenes via chemoselective S–N bond cleavage: Design, synthesis and applications. Organic Letters 28: 6791–6796.
Ghosh, B., Kafle, P., Mukherjee, R., Welles, R., Herndon, D., Nicholas, K. M., Shao, Y., and Sharma, I. (2025) Sulfenylnitrene-mediated nitrogen-atom insertion for late-stage skeletal editing of N-heterocycles. Science 387: 102–107.
Kafle, P., Herndon, D., and Sharma, I. (2025) Sulfenylcarbene-mediated carbon atom insertion for the late-stage functionalization of N-heterocycles. Journal of the American Chemical Society 147: 13824–13832.
Singh, S. P., Chaudhary, U., Daroczi, A., and Sharma, I. (2025) Fe(OTf)3 or photosensitizer-free blue light activated diazo-thioglycoside donors for iterative and stereoselective glycosylations. Nature Communications 16: 3651.
Kafle, P., Herndon, D., and Sharma, I. (2025) Sulfenylcarbenes and sulfenylnitrenes in organic synthesis. Chemical Society Reviews 54: 10344–10362.
Kafle, P., Kharel, P., Nilson, D., Yasuda, S., Herndon, D., and Sharma, I. (2025) Photolysis-generated sulfenylnitrenes enable site-selective nitrogen atom insertion into N-heterocycles. Chem 12: 102753.
Singh, S. P., Chaudhary, U., Daroczi, A., and Sharma, I. (2025) Iron-carbene-mediated catalytic activation of conventional thioglycosides for stereoselective 1,2-cis-furanosylations. ACS Catalysis 15: 9886−9896.
Kafle, P., Ghosh, B., Hunter, A., Mukherjee, R., Nicholas, K. M., and Sharma, I. (2024) Iron-carbene initiated O–H insertion/aldol cascade for the stereoselective synthesis of functionalized tetrahydrofurans. ACS Catalysis 14: 1292–1299.
Ghosh, B., Alber, A., Lander, C., Shao, Y., Nicholas, K. M., and Sharma, I. (2024) Catalytic stereoselective 1,2-cis furanosylations enabled by enynal-derived copper carbenes. ACS Catalysis 14: 1037–1049.