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Oguri Lab
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The lab learns from natural products made by living organisms in order to freely create new molecules.
AboutAbout the lab
Learning from natural products to create new molecules
The Oguri Lab studies the structures, biosynthetic mechanisms, and roles in nature of natural products made by living organisms, and designs and synthesizes new molecules with novel functions.
Using synthetic organic chemistry, the lab proposes approaches that rationally modify and expand biosynthetic pathways.
The lab systematically diversifies the molecular scaffolds themselves, assembling whole families of compounds that carry many functional groups.
The lab works on creating candidate molecules effective against infectious diseases and cancer, and on supramolecular research that makes use of natural product scaffolds.
Key terms
- Natural product
- A compound produced by living organisms such as plants and microorganisms. Many serve as the basis for drugs.
- Biosynthesis
- The process by which living organisms use enzymes to build compounds step by step inside the body.
- Supramolecule
- A structure formed when molecules gather through weak interactions and create a unified structure or function.
NewsLab news
A paper from the lab was published in Chem. Commun.
Prof. Oguri's foreword was published in Journal of Synthetic Organic Chemistry, Japan
Prof. Oguri's article "Natural Products Chemistry Today" was published in Gendai Kagaku
A paper from the lab was published in Chem. Asian J.
A doctoral student received the CSJ Student Presentation Award 2025
ResearchResearch themes
We study the structures, biosynthesis, and roles in nature of natural products, which carry the history of the evolution of life, and develop methods to design functional molecular families and synthesize them rapidly. Making full use of synthetic organic chemistry, the lab proposes approaches that rationally modify and expand biosynthetic pathways.
*Illustrative imageSkeletal Diversification Synthesis
The lab has mimicked the biosynthetic pathways that produce a wide variety of secondary metabolites, and has modified and expanded them with the tools of synthetic chemistry. By designing pluripotent intermediates that stabilize hypothetical biosynthetic intermediates, the lab has achieved selective synthesis of five different types of indole alkaloid scaffolds.
*Illustrative imageChemoenzymatic Hybrid Synthesis
Plants and microorganisms use enzymes to produce complex natural products under physiological conditions. By combining enzymatic and chemical synthesis, the lab has developed a process that builds a complex pentacyclic scaffold from simple substrates in just one day.
*Illustrative imageCovalent Ligands and Chemical Biology
Based on artemisinin, which transformed the treatment of malaria, the lab designed a family of molecules in which the carbon at position 6 is replaced with nitrogen. A tetracyclic scaffold is constructed from simple building blocks in four steps, and the lab uses it for chemical biology research with molecular probes and for creating drug leads.
*Illustrative imageSupramolecular Assembly from Natural Product Scaffolds
Bioactive natural products have structures in which functional groups are densely packed, giving them the potential for precise molecular recognition. Starting from these scaffolds, the lab controls the shape of luminescent complexes and the size of nanoparticles, and investigates how sensing functions arise.
MembersFaculty
The lab is made up of faculty members, doctoral, master's, and undergraduate students, project researchers, administrative staff, and technical assistants.As of 2026
- ProfessorHiroki OguriPublications ↗
- Associate ProfessorMasayuki SatakePublications ↗
- Assistant ProfessorRyo TanifujiPublications ↗
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Report an errorAbout the images
The top and research theme images are illustrative and were not taken at the lab. They are cropped from Wikimedia Commons images. Cropped CC BY-SA images are provided under the same CC BY-SA license as the original (version shown on each line).
- Top image: “Fluorescense Handful of light” Mateusz Urban / CC BY 4.0 (cropped)
- Skeletal Diversification Synthesis: “Catharanthus roseus )” Joydeep / CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)
- Chemoenzymatic Hybrid Synthesis: “Purine Nucleoside Phosphorylase” 作者不詳 / Public domain (cropped)
- Covalent Ligands and Chemical Biology: “Artemisia annua” Kristian Peters -- Fabelfroh 11:39, 16 September 2007 (UTC) / CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)
- Supramolecular Assembly from Natural Product Scaffolds: “Fluorescence rainbow” Maxim Bilovitskiy / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Suga Lab): “TRNA-Phe yeast 1ehz” Yikrazuul / CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Yanai Lab): “Pentacene molecule spacefill from xtal” Jynto (more from this user) / CC0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Isobe Lab): “Carbon nanotube (8,8) 3D ball” Jynto / CC0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Organic Synthetic Chemistry Lab (Kobayashi Lab)): “Fluorescense Handful of light” Mateusz Urban / CC BY 4.0 (cropped)
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