SAITOH Toshiaki, Ph.D. / Professor

Division of Organic and Medicinal Chemistry

Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences

Research Topics

1. The structure based drug design and the synthesis of heterocycles which have neuroprotective effects on the neurons of central nervous system.

2. The analysis of chemical reactions which include biochemical reactions, by computational chemistry.

Research in our group addresses an important problem which is related to neurodegenerative disease and includes investigations at the frontier of organic chemistry, medicinal chemistry and computational chemistry. The areas of research include the development of the synthetic method of heterocycles such as 1,2,3,4-tetrahydroisoquinoline derivatives, and the design and the analysis of chemical reactions and the interaction between drugs and proteins by computational chemistry. A core in our study is to clarify the reactivity of organic and biological molecules based on their chemical structures.

Representative Publications

1. Effects of 1-cyclohexcyl- and 1-cyclohexcyl-N-propargyl-1,2,3,4-tetrahydroisoquinoline on dopaminergic spontaneous discharge in nigral neurons of rats, Momoko Abe, Hiroko Munakata, Kenji Abe, Toshiaki Saitoh, Yoshie Horiguchi and Kyoji Taguchi, Brain Res. Bull., 121, 201-208 (2016).

2. Facil and shor-step synthesis of 5-substituted 2,3,4,5-tetrahydrobenzo[f][1,4]oxazepines using a modified Pictet-Spengler reaction, Toshiaki Saitoh, Michikazu Kitabatake, Takuya Sugimoto, Hiromu Kawakubo, Kunihiko Mohri,Yoshie Horiguchi, Heterocycles, 94(2), 342-349 (2017).

3. Short synthesis of 5-substituted 2,3,4,5-tetrahydrobenzo[f][1,4]thiazepines using modified Pictet-Spengler reaction, Toshiaki Saitoh, Michikazu Kitabatake, Yuuko Sugihara, Yuuki Ono, Yoshie Horiguchi, Kunihiko Mohri,Heterocycles, 94(6), 1063-1073 (2017).