Abstract
Nowadays, the development of new enantioselective processes is highly relevant in chemistry due to the relevance of chiral compounds in biomedicine (mainly drugs) and in other fields, such as agrochemistry, animal feed, and flavorings. Among them, organocatalytic methods have become an efficient and sustainable alternative since List and MacMillan pioneering contributions were published in 2000. These works established the term asymmetric organocatalysis to label this area of research, which has grown exponentially over the last two decades. Since then, the scientific community has attended to the discovery of a plethora of organic reactions and transformations carried out with excellent results in terms of both reactivity and enantioselectivity. Looking back to earlier times, we can find in the literature a few examples where small organic molecules and some natural products could act as effective catalysts. However, with the birth of this type of catalysis, new chemical architectures based on amines, thioureas, squaramides, cinchona alkaloids, quaternary ammonium salts, carbenes, guanidines and phosphoric acids, among many others, have been developed. These organocatalysts have provided a broad range of activation modes that allow privileged interactions between catalysts and substrates for the preparation of compounds with high added value in an enantioselective way. Here, we briefly cover the history of this chemistry, from our point of view, including our beginnings, how the field has evolved during these years of research, and the road ahead.
Highlights
More than twenty years ago, a new Big Bang occurred in organic chemistry [1]
2000, we witnessed the conceptualization of a new field, asymmetric organocatalysis, even though the first asymmetric organocatalytic reaction appeared in 1904 [2], when this discipline had not yet emerged
In 2003, when this common, discipline was stillwhere in itswe infancy andfirst talksteps about organocatalysis was barely as almost nobody knew this field, weasymmetric explored the first approachwas to the Friedel–Craftswas still in its infancy and talk about organocatalysis barely common, as type reaction using simple thioureas as organic almost nobody knew this field, we explored the first approach to the Friedel–Crafts-type catalysts
Summary
More than twenty years ago, a new Big Bang occurred in organic chemistry [1]. In. 2000, we witnessed the conceptualization of a new field, asymmetric organocatalysis, even though the first asymmetric organocatalytic reaction appeared in 1904 [2], when this discipline had not yet emerged It was only at the beginning of the 21st century with the parallel publications of List [3] and MacMillan [4], when a stream of work focused on this amazing area of research was triggered (Scheme 1). Yougenuinely sure that you not islysts expected to broaden the we scope of synthesis much more by “Are allowing new do drugs have any metal atom in the reaction medium?” This was the question that a professor asked us in front of our poster at a congress in Ischia (Italy, 2004). The protocols developed 15–20 years ago can be revisited to support the ‘eco-design’ of molecules, providing products of high molecular complexity while ensuring sustainability as much as possible
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