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Molecular-decoration technique offers boost to medicinal chemists

The ability to attach a variety of chemical groups to one position in a molecule facilitates the search for compounds that have useful properties. Reactions have been reported that could transform how chemists do this.
  1. Eric M. Ferreira

    1. Eric M. Ferreira is in the Department of Chemistry, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602, USA.

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Chemists have spent decades developing and refining the tools for constructing bonds in complex organic molecules — especially carbon–carbon (C–C) bonds, which form the framework of such molecules. Metal-catalysed cross-coupling reactions generate C–C bonds from carbon–halogen bonds, and have long been go-to reactions for synthesis. In an exciting report in Nature, Berger et al.1 describe an alternative cross-coupling strategy that uses a special type of carbon–sulfur (C–S) bond as a proxy for carbon–halogen bonds. Notably, this C–S bond is activated so that it becomes the most reactive site in a molecule for cross-coupling, and it can be installed directly at individual molecular positions with unprecedented levels of selectivity. The authors’ work could therefore reshape the strategic use of cross-coupling reactions for organic synthesis.

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Nature 567, 184-185 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-00767-w

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