New Progress Made in the field of Azetidine

Editor's Note

Recently, Professor Zhang Guozhu's research group from CCNU, in collaboration with Liu Yunkui's group from Zhejiang University of Technology, has reported a new study on the photo-induced copper-catalyzed radical annulation of aliphatic amines with alkynes to produce azetidines, which has been published on The Innovation, an international comprehensive academic journal, with a Ph.D. student named Li Jianye from the College of Chemistry at CCNU as the lead author, and Professor Zhang as the main corresponding author.

Azetidines serve as important raw materials, intermediates, and catalysts in organic synthesis, as well as important active units in drug molecules. Therefore, the development of an efficient and concise method to construct azetidines is of great significance in multiple disciplines.

However, it's a very absorbing but challenging work for organic synthetic chemists to selectively synthesize azetidines in an efficient way.

Professor Zhang's research group, just as reported, has successfully solved the problem above, through the [3+1] radical tandem cyclization reaction of simple alkyl amines with alkynes, which is under the copper-catalyzed process induced by visible lights. Besides, this technology features operation simplicity, cheap catalyst, and broad substrate scope, providing a potentially effective way for structural modification of drugs and natural product derivatives.

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Editor: Karan (trainee)

Reviser: Steve (trainee)

Designer: Peace (trainee)