Virtual Lecture: Catalytic Alkyne Chemistry: New Paradigms and Applications in Natural Product Synthesis

Lecture held on: May 25, 2023

Presenter

Prof. Alois Fürstner – Director of Max Planck Institut für Kohlenforschung, Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany

In this lecture, Prof. Alois Fürstner discussed the development of some new catalytic transformations and showed their impact on the logic and practice of target oriented synthesis. The focus is recent advances in alkyne functionalization with the aid of metal alkylidyne complexes, carbophilic Lewis-acid catalysts, as well as by unorthodox metal catalyzed addition reactions. These methods opened access to a host of target molecules of different chemical estates (polyketides, alkaloids, terpenes, cyclic peptides, etc.) with promising biological activities. In some cases, our synthesis campaigns led to the revision of the structures and/or bioactivities originally proposed by the isolation teams.