From the Back Cover
On the cover of this book is a Pacific yew tree, found in the ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest.
The bark of the Pacific yew tree produces Taxol, found to be a highly effective drug against ovarian and breast cancer. Taxol blocks mitosis during eukaryotic cell division. The supply of Taxol from the Pacific yew tree is vanishingly small, however.
A single 100-year-old tree provides only about one dose of the drug (roughly 300 mg). For this reason, as well as the spectacular molecular architecture of Taxol, synthetic organic chemists fiercely undertook efforts to synthesize it. Five total syntheses of Taxol have thus far been reported. Now, a combination of isolation of a related metabolite from European yew needles, and synthesis of Taxol from that intermediate, supply the clinical demand.
This case clearly demonstrates the importance of synthesis and the use of organic chemistry. It's just one of the many examples used in the text that will spark the interest of students and get them involved in the study of organic chemistry!
About the Author
T. W. Graham Solomons did his undergraduate work at The Citadel and received his doctorate in organic chemistry in 1959 from Duke University where he worked with C. K. Bradsher. Following this he was a Sloan Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Rochester where he worked with V. Boekelheide. In 1960 he became a charter member of the faculty of the Univrsity of South Florida and became Professor of Chemistry in 1973. In 1992 he was made Professor
Emeritus. In 1994 he was a visiting professor with the Faculté des Sciences Pharmaceutiques et Biologiques, Université René Descartes (Paris V). He is a memeber of Sigma Xi, Phi Lambda Upsilon, and Sigma Pi Sigma. He has received research grants from the Research Corporation and the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund. For several years he was director of an NSF-sponsored Undergraduate Research Participation Program at USF. His research interest have been the areas of heterocyclic chemistry and unusual aromatic compounds. He has published papers in the
Journal of the American Chemical Society, the
Journal of Organic Chemistry, and the
Journal of Heterocyclic Chemistry. He has received several awards for distinguished teaching. His organic chemistry textbooks have been widely used in 20 years and have been translated inot Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Malaysian, Arabic, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian. He and his wife Judith have a daughter who is a geophysicist and two younger one.
Craig Barton Fryhle is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Chemistry at Pacific Lutheran University. He earned his B.A. degree from Gettysburg College and Ph.D. from Brown University. Professor Fryhle's research interests relate to enzymes and metabolites of the shikimic acid pathway. His current research involves conformational studies of shikmate pathway substrates and analogues by molecular modeling and NMR spectrometry, and structure and reactivity studies of enzymes in the shikimic acid pathway. He has received research and instrumentation grants from the National Science Foundation, the M. J. Murdock Charitable Trust, and other private foundations. Professor Fryhle's work in chemical education has involved incorporation of active and computer-based learning strategies in organic chemistry, development of new experiments for undergraduate organic and instrumental analysis courses, and background work on the previous edition of this text. He is a volunteer with hands-on science programs in Seattle public schools. He was the 1999 Chair of the Puget Sound Section of the American Chemical Society. He lives in Seattle with his wife Deanna, and daughters Lauren and Heather.
