Novel Approaches to Carbonyl alpha-Functionalization

在这个由化学系化学合成计划资助的项目中，休斯顿大学化学系的唐·科尔塔特教授将探索解决酮的不对称α-官能化这一具有挑战性的长期问题的方法的发展。这项研究的中心假设是，活化的肼和肟类化合物将为醛和/或酮的不对称α-烷基化/官能化反应提供各种新方法的基础。对于酮衍生系统，使用现有技术无法产生的根本新的替代模式将以不对称的方式获得。对于醛和酮，相对于典型的方法，将有可能进行完全意义上的不对称α-烷基化/官能化，从而能够结合使用基于烯醇基的方法无法引入的官能化。本项目的重点是开发更有效的方法来制备复杂的有机分子。将开发的方法被设计成非常通用，因此将直接适用于广泛的具有生物重要性的天然产物、药物和相关化合物的不对称合成。因此，它们将被学术界、政府和私营部门的研究人员广泛使用。此外，该项目将为学生提供极好的培训，从本科前到博士后，包括那些在科学界历来代表性不足的学生。

In this project funded by the Chemical Synthesis Program of the Chemistry Division, Professor Don Coltart of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Houston will explore the development of approaches to the challenging and long-standing problem ofasymmetric alpha-functionalization of ketones. The central hypothesis of the research is that activated hydrazones and oximes will provide the basis for a variety of new approaches to the asymmetric alpha-alkylation/functionalization of aldehydes and/or ketones. For ketone derived systems, fundamentally new substitution patterns that cannot be generated using existing technology will be accessible in an asymmetric manner. For both aldehydes and ketones, it will be possible to conduct asymmetric alpha-alkylation/functionalization in an umploung sense relative to typical methods, thus enabling the incorporation of functionality that cannot be introduced using enolate based methods.This project focuses on developing more efficient methods for the preparation of complex organic molecules. The methods that will be developed are designed to be very general, and will therefore be directly applicable to the asymmetric synthesis of a wide range of biologically important natural products, drugs, and related compounds. Consequently, they stand to find wide use by researchers in academic, government, and private sectors. In addition, this project will provide excellent training of students, from pre-undergraduate to post-doctoral, including those from groups historically underrepresented in the sciences.