What is it about?
Tetramethoxyresorcinarene is a chiral entity which can be easily synthesised. Until now, the modification of this chiral cavity has been restricted to tetra. In this paper, we report a practical method to obtain partially-modified tetramethoxyresorcinarenes: tri-, distal di-, proximal di-, and mono.
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Why is it important?
Chirality is an important property because the other mirror form may have undesirable effects. It is of interest to study the effects of the two mirror forms of a chiral drug, which requires their separation. This requires another chiral entity. Tetramethoxyresorcinarene is a chiral entity which holds much potential for chiral recognition and separation applications. Our work enables greater control in the modification of this chiral cavity which would be important for its development towards chiral recognition, separation, and other cavity-related applications.
Perspectives
This work is the result of a 2-3 year investigation involving multiple strategies and unsuccessful attempts. Although column chromatography is required to separate the multiple products, the chromatographic separation is good, enabling it to be performed on large scales. This, combined with a single synthetic step, makes it a practical method for obtaining gram-quantities of partially-functionalised tetramethoxyresorcinarene. I hope the non-ideal selectivity and chromatography is not a deterrent to others to utilise this method, as you can obtain practical quantities of material within half a week of work. I also hope that this work enables others to build on this niche but very promising architecture.
Daniel Tan
Curtin University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Partial functionalisation of C4-symmetric tetramethoxyresorcinarenes, Supramolecular Chemistry, May 2019, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/10610278.2019.1620949.
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