Reaction adds chiral groups to nitrogen rings without first…

Reaction adds chiral groups to nitrogen rings without first installing reactive groups

A trio of researchers at the University of Cambridge has come up with a new way to control adding chirality to nitrogen rings without first installing reactive groups on them. In their paper published in the journal Science, Robert Phipps and grad students Rupert Proctor and Holly Davis, describe the new reaction process and possible uses for it.

As the researchers note, nitrogen rings with associated chiral groups (groups that are asymmetric in nature) are common in agricultural, pharmaceutical and bioactive products, and chemists would like to have methods of adding groups with certain kinds of chirality to nitrogen to a cyclic compound in which one of the rings is not a carbon atom. Prior efforts to do so have involved catalytic asymmetric reduction reactions, but they have suffered from the need to pre-install reactive groups and require many complicated steps. Others have tried using a Minisci-type reaction, but thus far, it has resulted in the addition of other groups to the rings. In this new effort, the researchers also employ a Minisci-type reaction, though in a different way—the result is a process that has fewer steps, does not require pre-installing reactive groups and allows for much tighter control over ring positioning.

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