Prof. Hailong Yan's group made significant progress in the synthesis and application of novel tertiary phosphine catalysts

In August 2020, Prof. Hailong Yan's group in the School of Pharmaceutical Science published a paper in Organic Letters entitled "Chiral Naphthyl-C2-Indole as Scaffold for Phosphine Organocatalysis: Application in Asymmetric Formal [4 + 2] Cycloaddition Reactions".

Tertiary phosphines are often used as Lewis bases in nucleophilic organocatalytic reactions. There are numerous types of reactions that can be catalyzed by tertiary phosphines.

For this class of catalysts, the previously reported research work mainly focused on the C2-symmetric structures. Prof. Hailong Yan's group designed and synthesized a series of asymmetric tertiary phosphine catalysts with naphthyl-C2-indole as the chiral skeleton, achieving the construction of a series of spirocyclic hydroxyindolyl cyclohexanone and polyfunctionalized hydrogenated dibenzofuran basic chiral skeletons containing multiple chiral centers. This new class of catalysts exhibited excellent catalytic performance during the reaction.

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Natural Science Foundation of Chongqing Municipal Science Commission, and the Basic Research Operation Funds of Central Universities.

View Article online：https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.orglett.0c02519

DOI: 10.1021/acs.orglett.0c02519