Margaret Brimble: 'Spiroketals are my favourite molecules'

I love to make intriguing and challenging molecules with unique chemical structures – lots of stereochemistry and spiro-type compounds. To get funding in New Zealand research has to be very applied, so when I moved back to the University of Auckland 20 years ago I had to start using synthetic chemistry to make bioactive compounds for drug discovery. I therefore ventured into the world of peptide chemistry, which I also love.

Spiroketals are my favourite molecules. They’re really nice scaffolds with rigid stereochemistry. They’ve got useful 3D structures that you can attach substituents to in order to generate a library of compounds for medicinal chemistry. I also like making complex peptides, which contain unusual unnatural amino acids, and cyclic peptides with unnatural bridging motifs.