Organic Synthesis: New Vistas in the Brazilian Landscape.

Ronaldo A Pilli,Francisco F De Assis

doi:10.1590/0001-3765201820170564

Abstract

In this overview, we present our analysis of the future of organic synthesis in Brazil, a highly innovative and strategic area of research which underpins our social and economical progress. Several different topics (automation, catalysis, green chemistry, scalability, methodological studies and total syntheses) were considered to hold promise for the future advance of chemical sciences in Brazil. In order to put it in perspective, contributions from Brazilian laboratories were selected by the citations received and importance for the field and were benchmarked against some of the most important results disclosed by authors worldwide. The picture that emerged reveals a thriving area of research, with new generations of well-trained and productive chemists engaged particularly in the areas of green chemistry and catalysis. In order to fulfill the promise of delivering more efficient and sustainable processes, an integration of the academic and industrial research agendas is to be expected. On the other hand, academic research in automation of chemical processes, a well established topic of investigation in industrial settings, has just recently began in Brazil and more academic laboratories are lining up to contribute. All these areas of research are expected to enable the future development of the almost unchartered field of scalability.

Highlights

Almost 30 years ago, Dieter Seebach attempted to review the important advances in the domain of organic synthesis over the twenty five preceding years and to project the future in this area (Seebach 1990)
Public awareness of the hazardous substances that are present in many chemical processes led society to question some of the benefits offered by the chemical enterprise
This is to imply that we may expect to see an even greater flow of results on the production of chemicals from renewable resources, the use of greener solvents and catalytic processes that will turn out environmentally cleaner chemical processes, enhancing atom utilization, securing the replacement of over-stoichiometric and hazardous reagents and the implementation of automated processes as an enabling technology

Summary

Introduction

Almost 30 years ago, Dieter Seebach attempted to review the important advances in the domain of organic synthesis over the twenty five preceding years and to project the future in this area (Seebach 1990). We decided to focus on the most promising areas of academic research which, in our viewpoint, are bound to contribute for the future progress in synthetic chemistry, namely: 1) green chemistry, 2) catalysis, 3) automation and 4) scalability, as well as, 5) the development of new and improvement of known methodologies and applications to the total synthesis of natural products and pharmaceutical ingredients.

Results

Conclusion