A study of the nudeophilic addition of beta-lactam carbenes to 3,6-diphenyltetrazines is reported. Instead of the formation of pyrazole derivatives like most reactions between nucleophilic or ambiphilic carbenes and 3,6-...
An efficient method for regio- and chemoselective Friedel-Crafts acylation of indole using acyl chlorides in the presence of ZrCl4 has been discovered. It minimizes/eliminates common competing reactions that occur due to...
A Pd-catalyzed aerobic [2 + 2 +2] cyclization of 1,6-diynes and acrylates proceeding through a chloropalladation process has been developed. Polysubstituted five-membered aromatic carbocycles/heterocycles were obtained i...
Novel carbonylated pyrazole phosphonates have been synthesized as single regioisomers by treating conjugated enones, dienones, tropone, and quinone with the Bestmann-Ohira reagent under KOH/EtOH conditions at room temper...
Suzuki-Miyauni cross-coupling of bromopolypyridines with potassium vinyltrifluoroborate affords vinyl-substituted polypyridyl ligands in moderate to good yields. This reaction allows simple and practical syntheses of num...
A palladium-catalyzed formal [6 + 3] cyclization of gamma-methylidene-delta-valerolactones with aziridines has been developed to produce 1,4-oxazonan-9-ones, a class of nine-membered azlactones that are not easily access...
Vicarious nucleophilic substitutions (VNS) of hydrogen in 1-nitro-4-(pentafluorosulfanyl)benzene with carbanions provide 2-substituted 1-nitro-4-(pentafluorosulfanyl)benzenes in good to high yields. VNS of 1-nitro-3-(pen...
Ten optically pure substituted 2-(pyridin-2-yl)imidazolidin-4-ones, 1a-d, 2a-4a, and 2b-4b, were prepared and characterized. The absolute configurations of individual ligands were determined by X-ray analysis or NOESY ex...
Selected examples from our laboratory of how synthetic technology platforms developed for the total synthesis of several disparate families of natural products was harnessed to penetrate biomechanistic and/or biosyntheti...
Despite over three decades of research into asymmetric phase-transfer catalysis (APTC), a fundamental understanding of the factors that affect the rate and stereoselectivity of this important process are still obscure. T...