Combined use of organo- and enzymic catalysis in three component couplings: Building blocks for bioactive molecule synthesis

The preparation of biological molecules, such as drugs and agrochemicals, generally involves many separate synthetic steps. At the end of each step, an intermediate is usually purified before functionalisation in the next step. To improve the efficiency of the construction of such molecules, the number of separate reactions and purifications would need to be reduced. This proposal will generate new methods which will allow more than one step to be performed in a single reaction vessel. This approach is broadly analogous to would involve the concatenation of several steps Nature: metabolic pathways involve the processing of reaction intermediate by compatible (enzyme) catalysts in a single reaction vessel (the cell). The products of the new methodology will be exploited in the synthesis of building blocks for preparation of biologically active molecules.