Parallel screening of catalytic ligands

Radleys have announced a new application report that describes how the Cooled Carousel 12 Reaction Station has enabled the Faculty of Natural Sciences, Comenius University (Bratislava, Slovakia) to improve the structure of novel chiral ligands used for Palladium catalysed allylic alkylation reactions.

Ferrocenophane ligands are known to be useful catalysts for Pd-catalysed allylic alkylation, giving allylation product in high yields and with good enantioselectivity. In order to improve the ligand structure and obtain higher enantioselectivities the Comenius research group used the Cooled Carousel Reaction Station to run a series of carefully controlled parallel test reactions. Running test reactions using different ligands and varying parameters (ligand loading, ligand / metal ratio etc) in parallel the Comenius research group were able to accelerate the reaction optimisation process.

The Cooled Carousel Reaction Station brings all the benefits of low cost parallel synthesis to applications that require sub-ambient temperatures down to -70°C. Based on the patented Carousel design, the Cooled Carousel fits onto a standard stirrer and can simultaneously perform a choice of six or twelve cooled and stirred parallel solution phase or solid supported reagent based syntheses. A central gas inlet and radial gas distribution system, combined with gas-tight PTFE caps, allow cooled reactions to be carried out under an inert atmosphere.

The Faculty of Natural Sciences at Comenius University is a member of the European Ligand Bank (LigBank®) consortium. Funded with the support of the European Community's Sixth Framework Programme the LigBank® Consortium was set-up to provide a Europe wide resource for distributing new ligands and information about their catalytic activity between research groups. With new catalytic processes representing one of the fastest growing sectors of the global fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals market the need to accelerate the synthesis and discovery of new ligand additives that strongly promote target catalytic reactions is a key objective. In 2004 the European Ligand Bank selected Radleys to supply products from its range of innovative parallel chemistry equipment to all members of the consortium.

For a copy of the applications report 'Screening of new Ferrocenophane ligands**' and further information on the Cooled Carousel Reaction Station please contact Radleys.

** Data was presented at the recent LigBank work in Bratislava