X. Peter Zhang
Boston College, MA·Chemistry
Most molecules that end up as medicines are handed, like left and right gloves: two mirror-image forms that look identical on paper but can behave very differently in the body. Making just one of those forms, cleanly and cheaply, is a central problem in synthetic chemistry.
- Fields
Chemistry
- Topics
metalloradical catalysis
asymmetric catalysis
enantioselectivity
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2030
What they work on
- Develop cobalt(II) complexes of D2-symmetric chiral amidoporphyrin ligands as chiral metalloradical catalysts, tuning their electronic, steric and chiral properties to control radical reactivity and stereoselectivity.
- Establish enantioselective C–H alkylation reactions that install carbon–carbon bonds at unactivated carbon–hydrogen positions through metalloradical activation and metal-supported organic radical intermediates.
- Establish enantioselective C–H amination reactions for stereocontrolled installation of nitrogen at carbon–hydrogen bonds using cobalt(II) metalloradical catalysis.
- Address outstanding selectivity problems in radical cyclization, including stereoselective alkene cyclization, and apply the resulting cobalt(II) processes to synthesis of natural products and pharmaceutically relevant small molecules.
More about the research
One promising route runs through radicals—fragments with a single unpaired electron. Radical reactions are fast, work under mild and neutral conditions including in water, tolerate many functional groups, and naturally chain together into cascades that build complicated structures in one step. Their drawback is control: radicals react indiscriminately and the flat, three-valent radical intermediate flips easily between its two faces, so mirror-image selectivity has been very hard to achieve.
Why it matters
Mirror-image forms of a drug molecule often have different biological activity, so chemists need practical ways to make a single pure form. Transition-metal asymmetric catalysis offers a route that can be relatively cheap and environmentally benign. Cobalt-based radical catalysts developed here could give synthetic chemists in academia and the pharmaceutical industry new, general reactions for building complex natural products and drug-like molecules with controlled three-dimensional structure.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Peter Zhang
Boston College, MA·Chemistry
Design and synthesize D₂-symmetric chiral amidoporphyrin ligands, ring-shaped handed scaffolds, to support cobalt(II) metalloradical catalysts that steer radical reactions.
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.
Ramesh Giri
Pennsylvania State University, PA·Chemistry
Develop transition-metal-catalyzed difunctionalization of alkenes bearing simple functional groups, using a dual ligand system of electron-deficient alkenes and organic nitriles to stabilize intermediates and promote C(sp3)–C(sp3) bond formation.
The school
Boston College: 11 labs on PI Pages, $96M a year on research, 161 research doctorates a year.
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