Development of the future generation of catalysts for asymmetric reduction

看看你的手，现在试着把它们重叠起来，你会发现它们是不可重叠的镜像。很大一部分的抗肿瘤活性化合物也以两种镜像形式（对映异构体）存在，这两种形式通常会表现出显著不同的生物学特性：一种可能是有价值的药物，而另一种可能是高毒性的。这是因为所有的生物都是由单手的积木组成的。生产“单手”药物最经济和最环保的方法是使用“单手”催化剂（尽管使用量很小，但允许发生化学转化的化合物）。约翰逊万丰，世界领先的工业催化剂，和教授M。威尔斯（沃里克大学）将开发一系列新的催化剂，基于威尔斯集团开发的非常有前途的设计。这些催化剂有望在未来10至15年内成为该技术领域的基准。

Look at your hands, now try to superimpose them and you will see that they are non-superimposable mirror images. A large proportion of pharmacologically- active compounds also exist in two mirror-image forms (enantiomers), which will often exhibit dramatically different biological properties: one might be a valuable drug, whilst the other might be highly toxic. This is because all living things are made of building blocks with single handedness as well. The most economically and environmentally sound approach to produce 'single-handed' drugs is by using 'single-handed' catalysts (compounds that, although used in minute amounts, allow chemical transformations to occur). Johnson Matthey, a world leader in industrial catalysts, and Prof. M. Wills (University of Warwick) will develop a range of new catalysts, based on the highly promising design developed by Wills group. These catalysts are expected to become the benchmark in this technology area for the next 10 to 15 years.