Research in our laboratory focuses on innovations in modern synthetic organic and organometallic chemistry to address fundamentally interesting questions of biological importance. It has recently been suggested that certain cancer treatments would benefit from targeting both the tumor itself and the resultant inflammation of the surrounding tissue. Inflammation in the tumor microenvironment has many tumor promoting effects that lead to proliferation and survival of malignant cells, angiogenesis and metastasis. The primary goal of our research program is to develop new synthetic methods based on transition metal catalysis to enable the synthesis of biologically active natural and unnatural products.