C.A. Malapit, J.T. Reeves,* C.A Busacca, A.R. Howell, and C.H. Senanayake (Boehringer Ingelheim), Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2016, 55, 326-330.

S.H. Kim and S.H. Hong,* Org. Lett., 2016, 18, 212-215 

If you missed the meeting here a couple of highlights, with more to follow next time.

Dr Thomas Colacot of Johnson Matthey gave a very enjoyable and intellectually stimulating presentation on new palladium (Pd) catalysts for cross coupling, which were inspired by the Buchwald second and third generation preformed catalysts.

Siyu Tu, of Dow, described the development of a process for separating diastereomeric mixtures of pentane-1,3-diol. The process takes advantage of the different physical properties and reactivity of the acetophenone acetals.

The optimist thinks the glass is half full

The pessimist thinks the glass is half empty

The chemist thinks the glass is full – half liquid – half air

The engineer thinks the glass is twice as big as it needs to be

The wine drinker thinks he/she is half way to the next glass of wine

The therapist asks you how you feel about the glass.

C-H activation is a hot topic at the moment but process chemists who are thinking of using this technology in synthetic routes will realise that in many cases the need to introduce additional functionalization to direct the incoming group into a particular C-H bond may lengthen the route.

Compounds Currently in Phase II-III Clinical Trials of Major Pharmaceutical Companies; New Structural trends and Therapeutic Areas

Fluoro-organic chemistry is a hot topic at present and about 20% of new pharmaceuticals have a fluorine atom, or sometimes several atoms, in their structure. This excellent review covers the synthetic routes to 51 fluorine-containing molecules that are in development or have been approved since 2011 (Yu Zhou et al, Chem Rev, 2016, 116, 422-518).