Source: School of Pharmaceutical Sciences
Written by: School of Pharmaceutical Sciences
Edited by: Wang Dongmei

The research group of Prof. Honggen Wang from the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Sun Yat-sen University published a paper entitled “Decarboxylative Negishi Coupling of Redox-Active Aliphatic Esters by Cobalt Catalysis” in Angewandte Chemie International Edition (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2018, 57, 13096-13100. IF: 12.102) on September 4th, 2018.

Carboxylic acids are among the most prevalent organic molecules found in nature, as evidenced by the fact that around 450 marketed drugs contain carboxylic acid functional group. Carboxylic acids are typically easily available, cheap and stable. These features render them ideal platform for organic synthesis, thereby providing simple route for drug synthesis and modification.

The reported work described an unprecedented cobalt-catalyzed decarboxylative cross coupling of activated aliphatic carboxylic acids with organozinc reagents. The method led to efficient alkyl–aryl, alkyl-alkenyl and alkyl-alkynyl couplings under mild reaction conditions with no external ligand or additive needed. The success of an in situ activation protocol and the facile synthesis of a drug molecule (±)-preclamol highlighted the synthetic potential of this method. Mechanistic studies indicated a radical mechanism is involved.

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21472250 and 21502242), and the Key Project of Chinese National Programs for Fundamental Research and Development (2016YFA0602900).

Link to the paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/anie.201806799