A new article by the team of CIQUS researchers led by Dr. Fernando López and Prof. Jose L. Mascareñas has been selected as a “Hot Paper” by Angewandte Chemie International Edition. Angewandte Chemie is, together with Nature Chemistry, the journal of higher impact factor in Chemistry; and “Hot Papers” in this journal are selected by the Editors for their importance in a rapidly evolving field of high current interest.
The efficient construction of medium-sized carbocycles (seven to nine-membered rings) remains as a major goal in synthetic chemistry, as these molecular frameworks constitute the structural core of many biologically active compounds and pharmaceutical agents, and there are very few practical methods for their assembly.
In this paper, the authors describe a simple, cost-effective and highly versatile method for the construction of these sized rings that relies on the use of a gold-catalyzed cascade cycloaddition. Moreover the authors report several pioneering examples of an enantioselective variant that allow the majoritarian production of only one of the two possible optical isomers (enantiomers) of the products.
Overall the technology opens new opportunities for the rapid, practical and even asymmetric construction of bio-relevant molecular skeletons featuring medium sized cycles.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/%28ISSN%291521-3773/homepage/2002_hotpaper.html
Gold(I)-Catalyzed Cascade Cycloadditions between Allenamides and Carbonyl-Tethered Alkenes: An Enantioselective Approach to Oxa-Bridged Medium-Sized Carbocycles
