Aug 22 2013
The excellence of the research performed at EPFL has once again been recognized at an international level. Jérôme Waser has been awarded a STARTING GRANT 2013 from the European Research Council (ERC).
© 2013 EPFL
Hypervalent Iodine Reagents: A Tool Kit for Accessing Molecular Complexity
Against the backdrop of an ever-expanding world population and increasingly limited resources, progress in chemistry, and organic chemistry in particular, is essential for the future of humanity. In the last century, transition metal chemistry has completely changed the field of synthesis. Nevertheless, it is often based on rare and toxic metals. Traditional organic chemistry, on the other hand, makes use of cheap and innocuous organic molecules but at the cost of more limited reactivity. Herein, we propose to design new hypervalent iodine reagents, which will combine the high reactivity of metals with the lower toxicity and cost of main group elements while opening new horizons for the synthesis of organic molecules.
The most important impact of the project will be to accelerate the innovative circle of progress, especially for research in medicinal chemistry. An extremely useful toolbox, an "iKit", will become available for medicinal chemists. The optimal outcome would be a "magic iodine bullet", which the chemist can use to install a chemical functional group on an organic molecule of his or her choice. An added impact of the project will be greater understanding of the reactivity of hypervalent iodine reagents and their interplay with metal catalysts, leading to unforeseen applications. This understanding can lead to the development of reactions catalytic in iodine, which can be useful not only for research, but also for the larger scale production of chemicals. Based on the successful outcome of this project, an unlimited number of organic transformations will be possible in the future. Applications will not be solely limited to synthetic chemistry, as there exists the possibility for emergent development of other well-defined reagents tailored to meet the needs of scientists in chemical biology and materials science.