Flow Synthesis in Hot Water: Synthesis of the Atypical Antipsychotic Iloperidone.

Inductively heated steel reactors continuously perform organic transformations in water under high temperature conditions, utilizing the unique physiochemical properties of water at subcritical conditions. We demonstrated the power of this set-up in the continuous synthesis of the atypical antipsychotic drug iloperidone, in which we performed four out of five steps under aqueous conditions.

Preparation of thermocleavable conjugates based on ansamitocin and superparamagnetic nanostructured particles by a chemobiosynthetic approach.

A combination of mutasynthesis, precursor-directed biosynthesis and semisynthesis provides access to new ansamitocin derivatives including new nanostructured particle-drug conjugates. These conjugates are based on the toxin ansamitocin and superparamagnetic iron oxide-silica core shell particles. New ansamitocin derivatives that are functionalized either with alkynyl- or azido groups in the ester side chain at C-3 are attached to nanostructured iron oxide core-silica shell particles. Upon exposure to an oscillating electromagnetic field these conjugates heat up and the ansamitocin derivatives are released by a retro-Diels-Alder reaction. For example, one ansamitocin derivative exerts strong antiproliferative activity against various cancer cell lines in the lower nanomolar range while the corresponding nanostructured particle-drug conjugate is not toxic. Therefore, these new conjugates can serve as dormant toxins that can be employed simultaneously in hyperthermia and chemotherapy when external inductive heating is applied.

Continuous flow chemistry: a discovery tool for new chemical reactivity patterns.

Continuous flow chemistry as a process intensification tool is well known. However, its ability to enable chemists to perform reactions which are not possible in batch is less well studied or understood. Here we present an example, where a new reactivity pattern and extended reaction scope has been achieved by transferring a reaction from batch mode to flow. This new reactivity can be explained by suppressing back mixing and precise control of temperature in a flow reactor set up.

Multistep flow synthesis of vinyl azides and their use in the copper-catalyzed Huisgen-type cycloaddition under inductive-heating conditions.

The multistep flow synthesis of vinyl azides and their application in the synthesis of vinyltriazoles is reported. The synthesis relies on a stable polymer-bound equivalent of iodine azide that serves to carry out 1,2-functionalization of alkenes in a telescope flow protocol. The intermediate 2-iodo azides are subjected to a DBU-mediated polymer-supported elimination step yielding vinyl azides in good yield. The third step involves the formation of vinyl triazoles by a copper-catalyzed Huisgen-"click" cycloaddition. The required heat is generated by electromagnetic induction based on copper. Copper serves both as heatable as well as catalytically active packed-bed material inside the flow reactor.

Palladium-catalyzed asymmetric allylic alkylations of polynitrogen-containing aromatic heterocycles.

We report the palladium-catalyzed asymmetric allylic alkylation (AAA) reaction of a variety of nitrogen-containing aromatic heterocycles, including pyrazine, pyrimidine, pyridazine, quinoxaline, and benzoimidazole derivatives. The mesityl ester, whose steric bulk prevents competitive deacylation of the electrophile from "hard" nucleophiles, is introduced as a new leaving group in allylic alkylation chemistry. In contrast to our previous studies of AAA reactions with pyridine-based substrates, no precomplexation with a Lewis acid is required before deprotonation with LiHMDS, underscoring the relative acidity of these electron-deficient nucleophiles.