Issue 21/2021 - New breakthrough in chiral organic acid catalysis

Recently, researchers from Xiamen University and Zhejiang University have realized a series of catalytic asymmetric dearomatization reactions based on chiral phosphoric acid directly activated carbon-carbon triple bonds through a hydrogen-bond-guided close ion pairing strategy, and established a new reaction mode
for chiral organic acids to directly activate alkynynes.

The reaction realizes chiral Bronsted acid catalysis based on direct activation of carbon-carbon triple bonds, which has excellent chemical selectivity, region selectivity and enantioselectivity, as well as good substrate universality, and is compatible with various aromatic rings such as naphthol, phenol and pyrrole, so as to realize the high-atom economic synthesis of a series of chiral quaternary carbon central spirocyclic compounds, which provides broad application prospects
for organic synthesis and medicinal chemistry.
The researchers also analyzed the asymmetric induction mode
of this kind of cyclic reaction through density functional theory calculations.

This research work not only provides a new activation mode for chiral organic acid catalysis, but also provides a new way and method
for the hyperenantioselective synthesis of drug active molecules.