Today, 10th of July, the CIQUS doctoral student Helio Faustino Ferreira obtained the maximum qualification for the defense of his Doctoral Thesis, with European Doctorate mention, entitled "Gold(I) catalyzed intermolecular cycloadditions of allenes". His work has been supervised by Prof. José L. Mascareñas and Dr. Fernando López.
Metal catalysis offer a huge potential for developing new chemical transformations which permit the transformation of simple and very accessible substances into more complex and relevant products (mainly cyclic products) from a biological point of view. Many polycarbocyclic type products have very interesting biological activities, but they are very difficult to prepare using standard known synthetic methodologies.
The basic goal of this work was to exploit the extraordinary coordination and activation properties of metals to invent catalytic cycloaddition reactions that allow building the central cyclic skeletons of these compounds quickly and conveniently.
Specifically, starting from very simple substances, they sought the development of new processes promoted by gold catalysts for obtain quickly and efficiently some important cyclic structures that constitute the key structural core of a large number of molecules with significant biological properties.
Among the developed methods, some of them already published in prestigious journals as J. Am. Chem. Soc., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. o Chem. Sci., the researchers highlight several synthetic methods that give access to highly functionalized cyclobutanes and cyclohexanes, as well as a large variety of oxabicyclic systems containing seven to nine-membered rings.
More information: http://www.usc.es/ciqus/en/groups/metal-bio-catalysis
