Phenols and anilines are two of the most important building blocks in industrial chemical manufacturing. Any process capable of converting one into the other is going to generate a lot of interest, and a paper by Shi and co-workers does just that.1 Direct conversion of an aniline to a phenol is a relatively straightforward transformation

Perhaps the best-known ring-expansion reaction is the Baeyer-Villiger oxidation, first reported in 1899- not surprisingly by Adolf von Bayer and Victor Villiger. As we’re all aware, reaction of a carbonyl with a peracid generates a Criegee-type intermediate that undergoes rate-limiting concerted rearrangement to form an ester or lactone. The migration order is substituent dependant, with

The ability to handle gaseous reagents presents a number of challenges for synthetic chemists. The problem becomes particularly acute when scaling up biphasic (liquid/gas) or even triphasic (gas/liquid/solid) systems due to limiting mass transfer effects. Pressure vessels or autoclaves are also not always practical and easy to come by. A practical solution to this (if

In March 1989, two chemists, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleishmann, stunned the world by claiming that an electrical current from a palladium electrode immersed in a test tube of water had resulted in nuclear ‘cold fusion’ at room temperature.1 For many years, attempts to understand and reproduce this seemingly impossible result- with sketchy information from

Back in August I posted a scheme for the synthesis of a late-stage intermediate towards PF-06826647, a compound identified by Pfizer as a potent and selective tyrosine kinase 2 (TYK-2) inhibitor. I asked if you could identify reagents or intermediates A, B and D. Below are the answers! You can read more here in the full

In 1981 Oppolzer published a short, racemic synthesis of Lysergic acid. Below is a scheme of the early steps in the synthesis. Can you identify reagents or intermediates G, I and H? Answers and a reference will be posted in late June, along with another problem. Enjoy!  

Last month I posted a scheme from a paper by a team from Merck describing the synthesis of a soluble guanylate cyclase (cGC) stimulator of interest for the treatment of hypertension and asked if you could identify reagents or intermediates B, F, and the target compound H. Below are the answers! You can read more here in

Whilst I was working towards my PhD in the early 90’s I remember reading ‘The Hot Zone’ by Richard Preston.1 Although non-fiction it read very much like a Michael Critchton2 thriller- describing the emergence and spread of viral hemorrhagic fevers and filoviruses such as Ebola and Marburg. Viruses such as Ebola are somewhat self-limiting in that the

One of the first encounters I had with complex structures and challenging organic synthesis was a course I took on the synthesis of antibiotics as an undergraduate chemist at Bath university almost thirty years ago. These molecules and I had had a love hate relationship for much of my early childhood, having consumed what must