Domino Reactions: the Green and Economical Art of Chemical Synthesis – Lutz F. Tietze tiszteleti tag székfoglaló előadása

The synthesis of natural products, drugs, agrochemicals and materials is a very important aspect in academia and industry. To allow an ecologically and economically favourable approach in an efficient mode the former stepwise procedures must be replaced by a novel methodology which permits the preparation of complex molecules starting from simple substrates in a straight forward way.

Lutz F. Tietze Fotó: mta.hu/Szigeti Tamás

Képgaléria a székfoglaló előadásrólWe have recently developed a new strategy, which we call Domino Reaction. It is defined as a process of two or more bond forming reactions under identical reaction conditions, in which the latter transformations take place at the functionalities obtained in the former transformations. In the process one, two, three or more components can be involved. Thus, multicomponent reactions are usually domino reactions. Moreover, we have classified the domino reactions according to the mechanism of the different steps. The approach allows a reduction of the amount of waste being formed and a preservation of our resources. Moreover, domino reactions are also economically favourable since they consume less time. Finally, they are highly useful for combinatorial chemistry in drug development and they allow the design of syntheses via unstable intermediates.

The usefulness of the domino concept will be demonstrated with the syntheses of the fungal metabolites diversonol and blennolide A as well as blennolide C and gonytolide using an enantioselective domino-Wacker/carbonylation/methoxylation reaction as well as of the natural aryldihydronaphthalene lignan linoxepine employing a domino-carbopalladation/Heck reaction. The approach has also been applied for the synthesis of novel materials such as molecular switches and fluorescence dyes using a domino-Sonogashira/carbopalladation/CH-activation reaction.