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nanotimes News in Brief

10-10/11 :: October/November 2010

Pharmaceutical Synthesis // IBN Scientists Develop Green Technique to Transform Carbon Dioxide into Useful Compounds

IBN Pharmaceuticals Synthesis and Green Chemistry Team (from left to right): Dr Dingyi Yu, Postdoctoral Fellow, and Dr Yugen Zhang, Team Leader and Principal Research Scientist. © Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) in Singapore

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cientists at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) in Singapore have

reported another breakthrough in their quest to develop green technologies for pharmaceuticals syn- thesis. Dr Dingyi Yu, postdoctoral fellow, and Dr Yugen Zhang, team leader and principal research scientist, have devised a new environmentally friendly technique to transform carbon dioxide into highly functio- nalized propiolic acids, which are basic building blocks for the synthesis of a wide range of pharma- ceuticals such as cholesterolreducing drugs and pep- tidomimetic and other small molecule inhibitors.

IBN’s approach involves the direct activation of the C-H bond and carboxylation of the terminal alkynes using a novel copper and copper-N-heterocyclic carbene catalyst that the researchers developed spe- cifically for this reaction. Excellent yields of propio- lic acid were obtained from carbon dioxide under ambient reaction conditions without the use of any organometallic reagents. IBN’s elegant and economi- cally viable protocol has great potential for real-world applications, as it is also flexible enough to be used with a wide variety of substrates. Moving forward, the IBN researchers hope to further develop this