Development of new Brønsted acid catalyzed reactions and their application in the total synthesis of natural products and biologically active compunds

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Magnus Rüping
• Subject Area: Organic Molecular Chemistry - Synthesis and Characterisation
• Term: from 2007 to 2011
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 40158135

The need for simple and efficient strategies to obtain complex natural and unnatural products has led to the development of new methods in organic chemistry. In this context organocatalysis is becoming one of the most important approaches to enable the synthesis of chiral products from achiral starting materials. In addition to amino- and carbene-catalysis, highly selective hydrogen-bond catalyzed reactions based on chiral diols and the thiourea skeleton have been reported. However, the development of highly enantioselective Bronsted acid catalyzed reactions is still less explored. It is, therefore, our intention to develop new Bronsted acid catalyzed enantioselective reactions to advance this exciting and challenging field of organocatalysis. To this end, simple routes to new chiral Bronsted acid catalysts are to be identified and the resulting catalysts will be used in the development of various enantioselective transformations. Furthennore, we hope to enable near to perfect reaction conditions and to grow our understanding of the mechanisms at play, which would ideally place us to embark on targeted catalyst and reaction design.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 1179: Organocatalysis