Manganese occupies an important position in drug synthesis

Houston-(October 5, 2021)-Just because you solved a long-standing chemistry challenge doesn't mean you can't make it better

Rice chemist Julian West and graduate student Yan-Chu Lu discovered that a rich manganese salt on the earth further simplifies the synthesis process of fluoroketone, which is the precursor molecule for drug design and manufacture

This complicated method required expensive silver catalysts until West's lab figured out how to replace it with a cerium-based compound

The laboratory published its results in the journal ACS Catalysis of the American Chemical Society

West said that connecting negatively charged fluorine atoms to ketones (biological compounds with multiple structures) helps guide functional groups toward the desired reaction direction for anticancer and other compounds

West said that compared with cerium, manganese has several advantages, not just because of its easy availability and low cost

Assistant Professor of Chemistry West said: "The number of products we make with cerium is very good, but for it to work, we must use as much cerium as the original material

Although cerium can promote the reaction relatively effectively, it is basically disposable

Cerium can be recycled and reused as a catalyst, but it requires a difficult re-oxidation

West said that manganese is also cheap enough that it may not be cost-effective for manufacturers to recycle this material

He said the only drawback is that the manganese-based reaction takes several hours to produce a batch of molecules, while cerium takes about half an hour

"In our opinion, this is a fair trade-off, because you reduce the number of reagents you need to add and get more compounds you want," West said

He said that a positive comparison with the silver catalyst proves that manganese provides more product molecules, but the number of catalysts is only half

The Texas Cancer Prevention and Research Institute (RR190025) and the Robert A.

DOI

10.
1021/acscatal.
1c03052