On the 9th of November of 2018, the newly refurbished Chemistry Teaching Lab was officially opened by the Principal Colin Bailey. Prof Marina Resmini, Head of the Chemistry Department had the honour of cutting the ribbon.
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Official Opening of Our New Teaching Labs
Aryne-Mediated Arylation of Hantzsch Esters: Access to Highly Substituted Aryl-hydropyridines
Synthesis, 2018, Accepted DOI: 10.1055/s-0037-1611065
This is a full account of our studies into the generation of highly functionalised 2-aryl-1,2-dihydropyridines and 2-methylene-3-aryl-1,2,3,4-tetrahydropyridines via intermolecular aryne ene reactions of Hantzsch esters. Furthermore, exposure to excess aryne revealed unusual 3′-aryl-spiro[benzocyclobutene-1,1′-(3′,4′-dihydropyridines)]. Mechanistic insights are provided by deuterium-labelling studies and DFT calculations, whilst preliminary cytotoxicity investigations reveal that the spirocycles are selective against colon carcinomas over ovarian cancer cell lines and that all the compounds have high selectivity indices with regards to non-cancer cells.
#TitrationDay
First day in the labs with our 1st year students. Today we will be doing acid-base titrations to determine the amount of citric acid in a sample of a powdered fruit drink. Students will use a standard solution of NaOH as a titrating agent and Phenolphthalein as indicator.
Organic Synthesis Under Inert Atmosphere
It is September again and as usual, we start the semester with the advanced practicals in chemistry with our Master students. It seems that after the summer break our students are in a very good mood and organic synthesis under nitrogen atmosphere becomes a balloon party!!!
Intermolecular Aryne Ene Reaction of Hantzsch Esters: Stable Covalent Ene Adducts from a 1,4-Dihydropyridine Reaction
Org. Lett. 2017, 19, 17, 4644-4647
The reaction of arynes with 1,4-dihydropyridines affords 2-aryl-1,2-dihydropyridines or 2-methylene-3-aryl-1,2,3,4-tetrahydropyridines via a regioselective C-2 or C-3 arylation. These compounds are the first series of isolable and bench-stable covalent ene adducts formed between dihydropyridines and unsaturated substrates. Experimental studies and DFT calculations provide mechanistic support for a concerted intermolecular aryne ene process, which may have implications for NAD(P)H model reactions.
On the road to the full control of the stereochemistry of dihalogenation reactions
The dihalogenation reactions of alkenes proceed with almost exclusive anti-diastereoselectivity and opposed to other well-known text book reactions, an enantioselective version seems quite elusive. In the last few years, I have been fascinated by two great advances towards the full control of the stereochemistry in reactions of dihalogenation of alkenes. First the discovery of enantioselective dihalogenation reactions and second the discovery of a catalytic syn-dichlorination of alkenes.
The development of enantioselective versions is very elusive because racemization can easily occur via olefin-to-olefin halenium transfer and non-regioselective nucleophilic opening of the halonium intermediates. The first successful approach to this problem was done by the group of Scott Snyder who developed a stoichiometric dichlorination reaction using a chiral borane auxiliary that forms an in-situ complex with the substrate[1]. The chlorinated olefin was obtained with 87% e.e. and that was a tremendous success due to the difficulty of the reaction. A catalytic version adds the nonenantioselective background reaction to the existing problems. Later discoveries of catalytic enantioselective dichorinaton, dibromination and heterodihalogenation reactions of olefins by the groups of Nicolau, Burns and more recently Borhan are simply spectacular [2–5]. Nicolau and Borhan approach the problem using Sharpless dihydroxylation catalyst (DHQD)2PHAL while Burns uses a combination of a Titanium salt with a chiral promoter. But all these approaches have in common a wise election of substrates (allyl alcohols and amides) that can serve as an anchor to the catalysts to overcome the regioselectivity problem.
The almost set-in-stone mechanism of the dihalogenation of alkenes involves the formation of a cyclic halonium ion followed by a backside nucleophilic opening that leads to the formation of the well stablished anti-product. Overturning the anti-diastereospecificity of this process is a major challenge. The group of Scott Denmark was able to develop the first syn-dichlorination of alkenes with a strategy based on a first step of anti-addition of an in-situ generated PhSeCl3 to an alkene followed by a nucleophilic displacement with a chloride ion source leading to a syn-dichlorination product overall.6
The process is made catalytic by adding an oxidant to the Ph-Se-Se-Ph precatalyst.
All these discoveries are impressive and I cannot help finding certain parallelism with the already Nobel Prize awarded hydrogenation and dihydroxylation reactions by Noyori, Knowles and Sharpless. I am very much looking forward to seeing further advances.
References:
1. Snyder, S. A., Tang, Z.-Y. & Gupta, R. Enantioselective Total Synthesis of (-)-Napyradiomycin A1 via Asymmetric Chlorination of an Isolated Olefin. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 131, 5744–5745 (2009).
2. Nicolaou, K. C., Simmons, N. L., Ying, Y., Heretsch, P. M. & Chen, J. S. Enantioselective Dichlorination of Allylic Alcohols. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 133, 8134–8137 (2011).
3. Hu, D. X., Shibuya, G. M. & Burns, N. Z. Catalytic Enantioselective Dibromination of Allylic Alcohols. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 135, 12960–12963 (2013).
4. Hu, D. X., Seidl, F. J., Bucher, C. & Burns, N. Z. Catalytic Chemo-, Regio-, and Enantioselective Bromochlorination of Allylic Alcohols. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 137, 3795–3798 (2015).
5. Soltanzadeh, B. et al. Highly Regio- and Enantioselective Vicinal Dihalogenation of Allyl Amides. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 139, 2132–2135 (2017).
6. Cresswell, A. J., T.-C., E. & Denmark, S. E. Catalytic, stereospecific syn-dichlorination of alkenes. Nat Chem 7, 146–152 (2015).
The Making of #ChemisTree 2016
It is again this time of the year, the semester has been very long. One more week of practicals and we are all ready for the Christmas break!!!
This year to honour the tradition we have our ChemisTree in the teaching labs. In this post I’m unveiling the secrets behind the colours of our 2016 ChemisTree.
Blue: A pinch of Copper (II) sulfate pentahydrate in water
Red: a few drops of Ferroin indicator in water
Green: A pinch of Nickel(II) nitrate hexahydrate in water
Deep purple: A pinch of potassium Permanganate in water
Violet: Literally 1 mg of Crystal Violet per Liter of water. Crystal Violet is a very strong dye.
Pink: A few drops of Phenolphthalein in a slightly basidified solution of NaOH in water. The colour fades away after a few minutes, long enough for a nice picture.
Many thanks to Indigo and Fosca for their help and creativity.
Paper chromatography of an ink sample
Brady’s Test for aldehydes and Ketones
Fighting Video game to promote science
