Scripps Research chemists have extended a powerful molecule-building method—called C-H activation—to the broad class of chemicals known as alcohols.
The synthetic chemistry feat, reported in Nature on September 6, 2023, follows the development of C-H activation techniques for the three other major classes of organic molecule—amines, acids and ketones—that are used to construct pharmaceuticals.
It gives chemists a versatile new toolkit for making drugs and other valuable compounds now using the alcohol chemical class; moreover, its underlying innovations suggest a general new approach to C-H activations.
“We anticipate that this strategy will be broadly applicable for transforming alcohols into useful molecules and compounds, including those that have been historically difficult to access,” says study senior author Jin-Quan Yu, Ph.D., the Frank and Bertha Hupp Professor of Chemistry and Bristol Myers Squibb Endowed Chair in Chemistry at Scripps Research.
The study’s co-first authors were Daniel Strassfeld, Ph.D., a postdoctoral research associate, and graduate student Chia-Yu Chen, both members of the Yu laboratory.
The organic molecules that are used to make drugs and other chemical products generally have a backbone of carbon atoms to which are bound a variety of other atoms, mostly hydrogen atoms. C-H activation involves the removal of one of these hydrogen atoms