Advancing Chiral Chemistry in API Synthesis

Researchers at the Graduate School of Engineering at Nagoya University in Nagoya, Japan, recently reported that they developed an asymmetric catalyst that assembles spontaneously, a development that lays the groundwork for further designing functional supramolecular catalysts. Their work involved using chiral organic ion-pair catalysts assembled through a hydrogen-bonding network (1). The researchers pointed out that overall development of structurally discrete, chiral supramolecular catalysts for asymmetric organic transformations has been met with limited success. In their work, however, the researchers reported that a chiral tetraaminophosphonium cation, two phenols, and a phenoxide anion appeared to have self-assembled into a catalytically active supramolecular architecture through intermolecular hydrogen bonding. The researchers developed the catalyst for the highly enantioselective conjugate addition of acyl anion equivalents to α-, β-unsaturated ester surrogates (1).