Chiral 1,2-dialkenyl diaziridines: synthesis, enantioselective separation, and nitrogen inversion barriers

Chiral stationary phases and applications in gas chromatography

Chiral compounds are ubiquitous in nature and play a pivotal role in biochemical processes, in chiroptical materials and applications, and as chiral drugs. The analysis and determination of the enantiomeric ratio (er) of chiral compounds is of enormous scientific, industrial, and economic importance. Chiral separation techniques and methods have become indispensable tools to separate chiral compounds into their enantiomers on an analytical as well on a preparative level to obtain enantiopure compounds. Chiral gas chromatography and high-performance liquid chromatography have paved the way and fostered several research areas, that is, asymmetric synthesis and catalysis in organic, medicinal, pharmaceutical, and supramolecular chemistry. The development of highly enantioselective chiral stationary phases was essential. In particular, the elucidation and understanding of the underlying enantioselective supramolecular separation mechanisms led to the design of new chiral stationary phases. This review article focuses on the development of chiral stationary phases for gas chromatography. The fundamental mechanisms of the recognition and separation of enantiomers and the selectors and chiral stationary phases used in chiral gas chromatography are presented. An overview over syntheses and applications of these chiral stationary phases is presented as a practical guidance for enantioselective separation of chiral compound classes and substances by gas chromatography.

Can an Intermediate Rate of Nitrogen Inversion Affect Drug Efficacy?

Nitrogen-inversion rates and diffusion coefficients were measured using 1H NMR for 14 drug-like molecules. The slow nitrogen-inversion rates interconverting the enantiomers of these molecules lay within a postulated intermediate range in terms of their ability to bind to proteins bounded by diffusion constraints, potentially affecting the availability, hence efficacy, of these compounds if they were utilized as drugs. The postulated intermediate range is based on a capture-volume concept, whereby the nitrogen inversion during the time a ligand takes to pass through a volume surrounding the protein binding site, as calculated by the diffusion rate, determines if it will influence ligand binding to the protein. In the systems examined here, the measured nitrogen-inversion rates and the times required to traverse the capture volume differed by a few orders of magnitude. Potentially more consequential are intermediate nitrogen-inversion rates in epimeric cases—since the energies of the interconverting species are unequal, a heavy bias against the eutomer might occur. The implications of an intermediate nitrogen-inversion rate are significant for in silico drug design, drug efficacy, molecular modeling of drug–protein binding, pharmacokinetics, drug enantiomer evaluation, etc. Due consideration of the process should thus be taken into account for drug development directions and in vitro evaluation.

New Trends in Diaziridine Formation and Transformation (a Review)

This review focuses on diaziridine, a high strained three-membered heterocycle with two nitrogen atoms that plays an important role as one of the most important precursors of diazirine photoaffinity probes, as well as their formation and transformation. Recent research trends can be grouped into three categories, based on whether they have examined non-substituted, N-monosubstituted, or N,N-disubstituted diaziridines. The discussion expands on the conventional methods for recent applications, the current spread of studies, and the unconventional synthesis approaches arising over the last decade of publications.

Photocatalytic Generation of Nitrenes for Rapid Diaziridination

A blue LED, an organic photocatalyst (rose bengal), and the Lewis acid like oxidant PhI(OAc)₂ were utilized to generate nitrene intermediates through reactions of 1,2-diols and aliphatic amines under mild reaction conditions. A versatile and rapid diaziridination strategy was established to construct functionalized 1,2-disubstituted diaziridines, diaziridines with chiral substituents, and 1,2,3-trisubstituted analogues with excellent reaction rates, yields, and stereoselectivities. Control and labeling experiments to elucidate the mechanism of this elegant metal-free photocatalyzed cyclization reaction were performed.

Review for chiral-at-metal complexes and metal-organic framework enantiomorphs

This review discusses chiral-at-metal complexes and introduces enantiomorphs from assembly structure. Owing to the diverse coordination number and activity of metal ions as chiral centers, abundant structures for chiral selectivity, catalysis, and polarized light-response are the notable advantages of the chiral-at-metal complexes. The rational design and preparation of linear multi-dentate ligands is a good choice to improve the stability of chiral complexes, such as multi-bonding structure for high stability as a self-limiting system. The bio-significance and potential application of chiral-at-metal complexes are discussed, such as the synergistic effect of catalysis and chiral selectivity of the metal center in enzymes. Enzyme could be remolded to replace the original central metal ions with highly active rare earth or precious metal ions to form artificial metalloenzyme or to remove the "redundant" part around the metal center to improve the accessibility of substrate. The polarized light-response mechanism of chiral opsin is introduced in relation to its role in animal migration. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are crystalline and porous materials built from metal nodes or clusters and organic linkers and provide the possibility to prepare artificial enantiomorphs. The preparations, applications, and characterization methods of MOF enatiomorphs are therefore introduced. We hope this review inspires researchers at all levels of their career to consider the title topic in their own research in terms of its application and potential value.

Diastereoselective synthesis of substituted diaziridines from simple ketones and aldehydes

Diastereopure substituted diaziridines from simple ketones, aldehydes and amines are here reported. These important chemical scaffolds are obtained in the presence of a weak inorganic base and hydroxylamine O-sulfonic acid (HOSA). This method introduces three stereocenters in one step to provide a wide variety of substituted diaziridines with high yields and diastereoselectivities.