LHASA project

The LHASA project has been in existence since 1968. During the years a number of extraordinately able graduate students and post doctoral fellows came to work with Professor Corey, almost all laboratory synthetic chemists. Whether it is the infectious enthusiasm for the project or just an enjoyment of using the computer as a research tool, not one alumnus of the LHASA project has abandoned his involvement with computers and returned to bench chemistry. They are (with current locations)... 

Johann Mulzer was bom in Prien, Germany in 1944. He received his doctoral degree from the Universitat Miinchen in 1974 imder the direction of Prof. R. Huisgen. He spent one year as postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University with Prof. E. J. Corey working on the LHASA-project. He went back to the Universitat Miinchen where he obtained his ha-bilitation in 1980. In 1982 he was appointed professor at the Universitat Diisseldorf. Since 1984 he has held his present position as Professor of Organic Chemistry at the Freie Universitat Berlin. His research interests are in the field of stereoselective synthesis of natural products and the development of new synthetic methods. 

Several expert systems have been developed for the prediction of chemical fate within organisms, or primarily metabolism. Three of the best known are META (Klopman et al., 1994 Talafous et al., 1994), MetabolExpert (Darvas et al 1999) initiated as a research project by CompuDrug in 1985, and a more recent program METEOR (LHASA Ltd., University of Leeds, U.K.). A formal comparison of the predictions of these systems does not appear to have been performed and published, although the predictions of META, MetabolExpert, and several human experts for a drug were presented for comparative purposes (Wilbury, 1999). 

A number of different systems have been developed to conduct computer-aided organic synthesis. Of these, one of the most extensive projects is LHASA ( 3 - 11). The method starts from a target molecule and derives a set of precursor molecules which can be expected to be converted to the target by one synthetic reaction or a simple sequence of reactions. Each precursor molecule so generated serves as the next target and the procedure is repeated, thus generating a tree of synthetic intermediates. Each precursor is somewhat simpler than its parent target molecule. 

Health promotion and social mobilization are major components of the National IDD Elimination Program that are mostly coordinated and carried out by the health sector in collaboration with other sectors. One of the main activities of the program has been the IDD Day in May of each year that involves all levels of government and the whole of civil society, and each year the event has a main theme. In May 2000, the 7th National IDD Day coincided with the launch of the Australia—China Tibet IDD Elimination Project in Lhasa, capital of the TAR. Since then a major advocacy event is planned around the IDD Day focusing on a specific province/autonomous region where the goal of IDD control is yet to be achieved. 

The Tibet IDD Ehmination Project supported a trial of setting up salt distribution networks in six counties in the Lhasa Municipahty and Shannan Prefecture to make iodized salt accessible to the population (Li et al., 2005) (Figure 85.4). Each Municipahty/Prefecture Salt Corporation was responsible for dehveting iodi2ed salt to shops or to the houses of some village chiefs as part of the network, to be sold at a fixed price (1.5Yuan/kg, approximately 20 US cents). Transportation costs were covered by the price... 

Despite the wealth of knowledge about various chemical reactions, there exists no formal framework of interrelationships to guide the chemist in the synthesis of even moderately complex molecules. The LHASA (Logic and Heuristics Applied to Synthetic Analysis) project is an attempt to codify and organize the techniques used in organic synthesis. 

One important aspect of the project has been the writing of a general purpose computer program which will aid the laboratory chemist and will employ both the basic and more complex techniques for synthetic design as elucidated by this study. The program (hereafter also called LHASA) is intended to propose a variety of synthetic routes to whatever molecule it is given. The responsibility for final evaluation of the merit of the routes lies with the chemist. The program is to be an adjunct to the laboratory chemist as much as any analytical tool. 

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