ORGANIC-08 Research Highlights

Abstract

The 23rd RACI Organic Division Conference, ORGANIC-08, was held at Wrest Point, Hobart, Tasmania, from 7 to 12 December 2008. More than 270 delegates attended to celebrate the breadth and share the excitement of organic chemistry. The conference program included eight plenary lectures, the Birch Medal lecture by Associate Professor Michael Sherburn (ANU), and invited and other oral presentations by researchers and postgraduate students. Topics covered exemplified the diversity of our discipline, and included natural products chemistry and synthesis, new synthetic methods and catalysis, bioorganic and medicinal chemistry, physical and mechanistic chemistry, and supramolecular chemistry and nanotechnology. The papers published in this special issue of Aust. J. Chem. include review articles from three of the plenary lectures at ORGANIC-08. Professor Ian Paterson (Cambridge, UK) reports on ‘Recent Advances in the Total Synthesis of Polyketide Natural Products as PromisingAnticancerAgents’,[1] while Professor Chris Moody (Nottingham, UK) describes a unique class of natural products, the benzothiazole alkaloids, in his review entitled, ‘Naturally Occurring Nitrogen–Sulfur Compounds. The Benzothiazole Alkaloids’.[2] A review in the supramolecular chemistry–nanotechnology area is provided by Professor Jean-Francois Nierengarten (Strasbourg, France) on ‘Synthesis and Properties of Fullerene-Rich Dendrimers’.[3] Professor Yasuyuki Kita, Ritsumeikan University, Japan, also a plenary speaker, reports on the unique chemistry of hypervalent iodine compounds in a Rapid Communication entitled ‘Organoiodine-Catalyzed Oxidative Spirocyclization of Phenols using Peracetic Acid as Green and Economic Terminal Oxidant’.[4] Plenary lecturer, Professor Stephen Hashmi (Heidelberg, Germany) communicates more of his fascinating gold catalyzed chemistry in a full paper entitled ‘Gold Catalysis: Chemoselective Indolin Synthesis in the Presence of Acrylate Units’.[5] Articles by some of the invited speakers highlight the different themes of the conference and include the synthesis of bioactive