Fused indolines made by asymmetrical carbon-carbon coupling
Thursday, July 7, 2011 - 06:00
in Physics & Chemistry
(PhysOrg.com) -- Many drugs are based on natural substances. Because it is usually difficult, if not impossible, to isolate these in sufficient quantities from plants or microorganisms, they must be synthesized in the laboratory. This requires linking carbon atoms with the right spatial orientation (stereochemistry) relative to each other. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, E. Peter Kündig and a team from the University of Geneva (Switzerland) have now introduced a palladium-catalyzed synthesis that allows them to produce indoline derivatives with the correct spatial arrangement.