Flow Chemistry European Summit 2024 Agenda

Continuous Photocatalytic C-X Couplings in Polymer-Based Microreactors
Gianvito Vilé, Associate Professor in Chemical Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Italy

Title to be Confirmed.
Marcus Baumann, Assistant Professor, School of Chemistry, University College Dublin, Ireland

Flow-based Methods for Chemical Peptide and Protein Synthesis
Nina Hartrampf, Assistant Professor, University of Zurich, Switzerland

The field of biopharmaceuticals is rapidly expanding, requiring new methods for the on-demand production of chemically modified peptides and proteins. This chemical synthesis involves the iterative formation of amide bonds and requires high yields for efficient incorporation of each individual amino acid. Solid-phase peptide synthesis (SPPS) has been a standard method for chemical peptide and protein production for the past 60 years, but its outcome can be highly dependent on the peptide sequence synthesized. One issue that often arises is the aggregation of growing peptide chains on the solid support, which can lead to incomplete couplings ("difficult sequences”), and this effect generally correlates with low synthesis yields. Previous research into this sequence-dependent phenomenon was limited by the lack of high-throughput analytical methods, thus impeding systematic analysis.

As opposed to batch-SPPS, flow-SPPS not only accomplishes rapid synthesis of tailored peptides and proteins but also enables the collection of in-line analytical data that gives new insights into sequence-dependent events such as aggregation. In this presentation, various parameters affecting aggregation will be analyzed, and the development of new computational methods, technological solutions, and synthetic tools to reduce the sequence dependence in SPPS will be disclosed.

Title to be Confirmed.
Stephen Hilton, Associate Professor, University College London School of Pharmacy, United Kingdom

Title to be Confirmed.
Martina Letizia Contente, Tenure-Track Assistant Professor, University of Milan, Italy

Copper-Catalyzed Continuous-Flow Transfer Hydrogenation In Ethylene Glycol
Katia Martina, Associate Professor of Organic Chemistry, Università degli Studi di Torino, Italy

Conventional protocols are increasingly being replaced by new efficient synthetic processes that use safer chemicals, naturally abundant solvents, atom economy and efficient catalytic systems to yield the desired product with sustainability, scalability and high chemical efficiency. Flow approaches have been demonstrated to show great merit in safety and speed, as well as in their increased yields and quality. Given the importance of this process in both industry and academia, it is not surprising that a vast number of catalytic flow-chemistry hydrogenation protocols have been reported over the last decade with noble metals and that reductions of nitro benzene to aniline and alkyne to alkenes are largely studied. Non-noble metals have also been of great interest to the scientific community due to their economic and environmental advantages. The preparation of a robust supported catalyst that is made up of copper nanoparticles on celite for the selective transfer hydrogenation under continuous flow of nitroarenes and alkynes will be presented. The method is efficient and environmentally benign thanks to the absence of hydrogen gas and precious metals. Long-term stability studies show that the catalytic system is able to achieve very high conversion (> 99%) when working for long time. The versatility of the transfer hydrogenation system has been tested using representative examples with moderate-to-excellent yields being obtained.

Title to be Confirmed.
Maurizio Benaglia, Full Professor of Organic Chemistry, Dipartimento di Chimica, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy

Title to be Confirmed.
Heidrun Gruber-Wölfler, Associate Professor, Graz University of Technology, Austria

Title to be Confirmed.
Christophe Len, Professor, Chimie ParisTech, CNRS, France