Ming Chen
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, VA·Chemistry·Early-career
Many molecules come in two mirror-image forms, like left and right hands, and in medicines only one of the two usually does the desired job. Making just the wanted form on demand is one of the hardest problems in chemistry.
- Fields
Chemistry
- Topics
organoboron
asymmetric catalysis
enantioselective synthesis
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- Develop asymmetric transformations of 1,1-bisborylalkanes bearing two chemically distinct boron groups on one carbon, so that each group can be activated separately to attach fragments in a chosen order.
- Establish a cobalt-catalyzed hydroboration reaction that produces enantioenriched 1,1-bisborylalkanes, supplying single-handed starting materials for building more complex organoboron structures.
- Characterize the fundamental reactivity differences between the two boron groups in bisboryl reagents, to define how they can be used to reach organoboron compounds inaccessible by current methods.
- Create catalytic asymmetric reactions that exploit α-boryl metal complexes and α-boryl radicals, reactive carbon centers next to boron, to build single-handed molecules relevant to drug discovery.
- Work with computational chemists to determine the mechanisms of these boron-based reactions and use the resulting insight to design new transformations.
More about the research
This work attacks it using boron: compounds in which a boron-containing group is attached to carbon are unusually versatile, because that group can be swapped for many others in a predictable, single-handed way, and because boron's empty orbital stabilizes reactive intermediates on the neighboring carbon. The two projects share a goal of turning boron compounds into reliable, modular building blocks for single-handed molecules.
Why it matters
Single-handed molecules are central to pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals, where the two mirror-image forms can behave very differently. Methods that assemble such molecules modularly around a boron-bearing carbon could give medicinal chemists access to three-dimensional structures that are currently difficult to make, broadening the chemical space available for drug discovery, and the work trains graduate and undergraduate students in stereocontrolled synthesis.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Mark Biscoe
CUNY City College, NY·Chemistry
Develop palladium- and copper-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions that transfer handedness from enantioenriched secondary alkylboron reagents to new carbon centers with predictable retention or inversion.
Thomas Snaddon
Indiana University, IN·Chemistry
Develop enantioselective Lewis base-catalyzed reactions, using catalysts that donate an electron pair, to build fluorinated C(sp3) stereogenic centers while controlling which mirror-image form is made.
Aaron Aponick
University of Georgia, GA·Chemistry
Identify Pd(II)-StackPhos catalysts, palladium paired with a chiral imidazole-based biaryl ligand, that give high mirror-image selectivity in alkene 1,2-difunctionalization for both syn- and anti-addition.
The school
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University: 35 labs on PI Pages, $657M a year on research, 496 research doctorates a year.
More about Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
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