Frontiers in Asymmetric Multicomponent Reactions

Dear Colleagues,

Symmetry in nature goes hand in hand with human’s perception of beauty. More importantly, symmetry properties of organic molecules play a paramount role in determining their biological and chemical activities. For this reason, a selective synthesis of one of two “nonsuperimposable mirror images” of chiral organic molecules (asymmetric synthesis) is critical to future advances in medical sciences and drug discovery. Discovery of multicomponent reactions (MCRs) that form multiple new carbon–carbon bonds between two or more substrates in just one synthetic operation represents one of the most significant advances in modern synthetic organic chemistry.

However, it has only been in the past decade that a significant progress in the design of catalytic asymmetric MCRs has been realized. Such reactions use only a substoichiometric amount of enantiomerically pure material (a catalyst) to deliver the MCR product as a single enantiomer, effectively achieving a significant “multiplication of asymmetry”.

The aim of this Special Issue is to highlight the most recent achievements, and to outline the future directions in the design of catalytic enantioselective MCRs. The coverage of the full diversity of the field is the most important goal. Thus, all mechanistic variants and strategic approaches that have been employed towards addressing this synthetic challenge will make excellent contributions.

Examples of contributions relevant to this Special Issue include, but are not limited to:

(i) catalytic asymmetric synthesis of an enantiomerically pure compound that would be used in a subsequent diastereoselective MCR to provide complex enantiomerically pure products with additional stereogenic centers;
(ii) application of all types of enantiomerically pure catalysts (organocatalysts, transition metal catalysts, acid or base catalysts, enzymatic catalysts) in MCRs to afford products in a high enantiomeric purity;
(iii) application of a kinetic or dynamic kinetic resolution in tandem with an MCR to afford enantiomerically pure product(s) of the MCR.

Prof. Dr. Helena C. Malinakova
Guest Editor

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• multicomponent reactions
• asymmetric synthesis
• diastereoselective synthesis
• desymmetrization
• chiral catalyst
• chiral building blocks