Cyanation of aryl bromides

Vladimir Grushin and co-worker from ICIQ have reported in JACS on a cyanation reaction of an aryl bromide.  The cyanide source was sodium cyanide, which makes me nervous but apparently there are  no toxic promoters in this reaction. Did you know that you should work up a cyanide reaction with bleach?

JACS paper

Atropisomers with peptoids

Kent Kirshenbaum and co-workers at NYU have reported in JACS on peptide like atropisomers.   If you’re not familiar with atropisomers just think of the BINAP ligands that Noyori used for asymmetric hydrogenations.

JACS paper

5,6-dihydroglaucogenin C synthesis

Weisheng Tian and co-workers at Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry have reported in ACIEE on their synthesis of a saturated glaucogenin C.

ACIEE paper

Moving the bonds

Vijay Nair and co-workers from CSIR have reported in Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry on a NHC catalyzed cascade reaction converting 2H-chromene-3-carboxaldehydes to 3-methyl-2H-chromen-2-ones.

OBC paper

4 component coupling for spiroindolines

Laurent El Kaim and co-workers from CNRS have reported in Chem Comm on a multicomponent coupling approach to access spiroindolines.

Chem Comm paper

Cytopiloyne synthesis

Jinq-Chyi Lee and co-workers at the Institute of Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical research in Taiwan have reported in Chemistry a European Journal on a polyne natural product that has anti-diabetic activity.

Chemistry a European Journal paper

Diplopuupehenone

Natalia Utkina and co-workers from the Pacific Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry in Russia have reported in Tetrahedron Letters on the isolation of diplopuupehenone, which was found to have antioxidative properties.

TL paper

Hydroxymethylcytosine

Thomas Carrel and co-workers from Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich have published a mini-review on hydroxymethylcytosine, a newly discovered modification of DNA – as if methylating cytosine was not enough.

ACIEE paper

Saxitoxinol synthesis

Toshio Nishikawa and colleague at Nagoya University have reported in ACIEE on their synthesis of saxitoxinol, an analog of saxitoxin.

ACIEE paper

Chemistry and biology of pinnatoxins

Armen Zakarian and co-workers from UCSB have reported in JACS on their biological and synthetic studies of pinnatoxins.

JACS paper