Tha novo catalytic synthesis of β-aminoacids from CO2

ended

This proposal deals with the development of an innovative and unconventional catalytic de novo approach to β-amino acids, compounds of remarkable biological significance, using simple, available and abundant carbon dioxide (CO2) as C1 synthon. Specifically, NOVOCAT will promote a synergistic catalytic C-N bond-cleavage/CO2 insertion event of readily available aziridines from a synergistic and rather challenging C-N cleavage/CO2 insertion event. The project will offer all the necessary understanding behind the factors influencing both C-N bond-cleavage and the subsequent CO2 insertion event, thus opening up new horizons in preparative organic chemistry as well as offering solutions to a social, industrial and academic problem such as the use of CO2 as chemical feedstock. NOVOCAT´s design will allow for promoting a counterintuitive catalytic desymmetrization or dynamic kinetic resolution events of aziridines with CO2 en route to β-amino acids. This proposal will lead to new knowledge in synthetic design, thus providing new logics in retrosynthetic analysis that will likely attract the interest of both pharmaceutical and industrial laboratories.