REDUCING SYNTHETIC CHALLENGES WITH REDUCTIVE ELECTROCHEMICAL COUPLING

摘要

Tertiary alcohols are a common motif in natural products synthesis and medicinal chemistry. Grignard reactions have historically been the go-to for making tertiary alcohols from ketones. However, the strong nucleophiles used in the reaction to couple with the ketones are not very selective, which makes synthetic routes to complex molecules harder and longer, as chemists have to design around unwanted side reactions. Now, a collaboration between Shelley Minteer, Phil Baran, and their teams has developed an electrochemical ketone-olefin coupling that makes tertiary alcohols efficiently and selectively while bypassing many of the challenges associated with Grignard reactions (DOI: 10.1021/jacs.0c11214).