Current Organic Chemistry - Volume 11, Issue 15, 2007

Since the discovery that indium could affect a Barbier-type allylation of carbonyls in water over a decade ago, interest in the utility of indium metal and its salts to influence organic transformations has increased exponentially. Control of chemo-, regio-, and especially stereoselectivity in indium-mediated reactions has proven to be a challenge, however, examples of such discerning processes are now beginning to appear on a re Read More

The various approaches to the synthesis of hydroporphyrins are summarized. Transformations of synthetic porphyrins have been extensively studied in the last decade due to their easy availability. Many two and three step reaction sequences have been developed, which have allowed access to a broad variety of structures including not only chlorins but also benzochlorins, secochlorins etc. The fact that porphyrins can Read More

Synthesis of macrocyclic compounds including natural products with varying complexities by ring closing metathesis is described. Twelve to very large rings that have been synthesized in moderate to good yields and the synthesis of larger rings as a part of bi- or poly-cyclic systems are also described in this review. The effectiveness of the Grubbs’ catalyst towards the RCM in presence of free alcohols, epoxides as well as with Read More

Imidoyl radicals (R1N=C.R2) are very attractive intermediates that can be readily produced by several methods, i.e. hydrogen atom abstraction from aldimines, homolytic fragmentation of certain imidoylic precursors, and addition of both carbon- and heteroatom-centered radicals to isonitriles and isothiocyanates. As far as their synthetic potential is concerned, they have been shown to perform smooth intra- and inter Read More

Oxcarbazepine (OXC), the active ingredient of Trileptal® (Novartis Pharma), has become the most widely prescribed drug for the treatment of epilepsy and other CNS diseases, due to its improved side-effect profile and relevant anticonvulsant activity compared to the parent drug, carbamazepine (CBZ). Given its importance and well-established therapeutic applications, much effort has been devoted to the improve Read More