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Synthetic chemistry

Recipes for excess

Nature volume 437, pages 487–488 (2005)Cite this article

The selective production of a particular mirror-image form of a molecule is immensely important to organic synthesis. But techniques to find the right catalysts have traditionally been protracted and fiddly. Help is at hand.

Chiral molecules are molecules that come in two non-superimposable mirror-image forms, known as enantiomers. Synthesizing one enantiomer of a chiral molecule in preference to the other is difficult but crucial: among other things, single-enantiomer drugs account for some 40% of worldwide drug sales, worth more than US$100 billion1. In recognition of this, the 2001 Nobel Prize in Chemistry2 was awarded for the development of chiral catalysts for ‘enantioselective’ synthesis. A notable advance since then has been the recognition that the often neglected, more symmetrical ‘achiral’ components of a chiral catalyst can be used to improve enantioselectivity further. Recent work3,4 that focuses on transformations involving rhodium phosphite and phosphoramidite catalysts is illustrative of this approach.

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  1. Department of Chemistry, Yale University, PO Box 208107, New Haven, 06520-8107, Connecticut, USA

    John Hartwig

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Hartwig, J. Recipes for excess. Nature 437, 487–488 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/437487a

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