The 115 Year Old Multicomponent Bargellini Reaction: Perspectives and New Applications.

Despite its uniqueness, the Bargellini multicomponent reaction remains barely known by the most part of chemists. This can be ascribed to the fact that this transformation has not been adequately reviewed in the classic books of named reactions in organic chemistry. Nevertheless, several works on this reaction have been carried out over the years, many of them were written in Italian in the period 1929-1966. In this review article we extensively cover, in a chronological order, the most important applications of the Bargellini reaction reported to date, with the hope that this knowledge-sharing will help chemists to properly use this multicomponent transformation and imagine novel reactivities based on it.

Synthetic chemistry with friendships that unveiled the long-lasting mystery of lipid A.

Endotoxin research in recent years at the molecular level has required chemically synthesized lipid A without contamination by other bioactive components. Total synthesis of Escherichia coli-type lipid A was achieved in the 1980s by the challenging spirits of the scientists at Osaka University, Japan. They clarified the role of lipid A in the immunological activities of endotoxin in collaboration with Japanese and German researchers, based on the friendships that existed between them. This article introduces the great contributions made by three generations of professors, Tetsuo Shiba, Shoichi Kusumoto, and Koichi Fukase, at the Laboratory of Natural Product Chemistry at Osaka University, to the study over four decades of endotoxin.