Abstract

Machine Assisted Organic Synthesis

Steven Ley, Professor, University of Cambridge

The search for new ways to assemble molecules that have biological function continues to be an important driver for organic synthesis programmes. The activity and exquisite structural diversity of many natural products and drug substances stimulates invention by challenging today’s synthetic methods. However, preparing such materials from small and commercially available building blocks inevitably involves more than one synthetic step. For most modern drugs and other complex molecules, it is not uncommon for syntheses to require at least 8 steps, and sometimes many more. In order to make molecules more efficiently and more sustainably, our group has developed and used solid-supported reagents in a multi-step fashion without the use of conventional work-up procedures. Now we have extended these concepts to make use of advanced scavenging agents and catch-and-release techniques, and combined these with the use of continuous flow processing to create even greater opportunities for organic synthesis using a machine-assisted approach.