The group of Phil Baran at Scripps is researching on more efficient ways to prepare complex molecules.  Many complex syntheses rely on elegant protecting group strategies, bur process chemists would like to make molecules without using protecting groups since this inevitably adds two extra steps per protection, one to put on and one to take it off ( though in practice several groups are often  simultaneously removed by one reagent.)

A recent review in Nature Chemistry, the journal which started publishing last year, by Ian Young and Phil Baran covers syntheses in the last 5 years which have benefited from the desire to exclude protection group strategies (Nature Chem, June 2009, 193 –2005).  This excellent review article is surprisingly available to download at www.nature.com/naturechemistry  without having a subscription to the journal.