Organic Chemistry Seminar

Many natural products and pharmaceutical compounds have complex skeletons. One of the major challenges in synthesizing these molecules is how to efficiently build the complex skeletons within. Even though there are many powerful reactions (such as Diels-Alder reaction, Pauson-Khand reaction, ring-closing metathesis reaction) for accessing different ring structures, new ring formations reactions, especially those complementing or surpassing previous ones, are in high demand. To solve this challenge, my group has been endeavoring to develop new ring formation reactions. Since 2004, a dozen of ring formation reactions has been developed by us. Application of these ring formation reactions in total synthesis of natural products has been conducted by us and other leading chemists. In this 50-minute seminar, I will discuss the development and mechanistic understanding of several transition metal catalyzed ring formation reactions for constructing synthetically difficult seven- and eight-membered rings, together with application of our [5+2+1] reaction in the synthesis of natural products.

In the second part of this talk, I will share our recent discovery of arene hydrogenation reaction at room temperature under 1 atmosphere hydrogen gas.