Artemisinin, one of the topics of the Nobel Prizes in Medicine in 2015, and its derivatives have been used to treat malaria. A new study published in the Journal of Natural Products finds that the endoperoxide formation of artemisinin from dihydroartemisinic acid, its biosynthetic precursor, undergoes a mixed mechanism. The study, from the lab of Francis Yoshimoto at UTSA, used regioselectively deuterated dihydroartemisinic acid isotopologues to measure competitive intermolecular kinetic isotope effects in the formation of artemisinin. The supporting information file is over 500 pages!
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