The 245th ACS National Meeting & Exhibition is right around the corner and will be held in New Orleans, Louisiana from April 7-11, 2013. I guess it’s somewhat fitting that I happen to be writing this post on Fat Tuesday…#MardiGras! The theme of the spring meeting, “Chemistry of Energy & Food,” is fitting for New Orleans. As usual, we here at All Things Metathesis will provide some highlights of the noteworthy abstracts describing olefin metathesis based research.
A quick search of the technical program for “metathesis” provided an impressive 102 hits. Of course, all of these are not strictly olefin metathesis examples, with some being alkane, alkyne, ene-yne, etc… to name a few.
To kick things off, let’s see what the olefin metathesis Nobel Laureates will be up to in New Orleans. It doesn’t look like Richard Schrock will be present in the Big Easy, but some collaborative work from his and Hoveyda’s lab will be presented by Erik Townsend describing Z- and chemoselective metathesis reactions of 1,3-dienes. Bob Grubbs will be very busy in NO, warming up with a polymer focused talk on Monday April 8th, followed by 3 talks on Tuesday, April 9th, all in various honorary symposia.
The Grubbs group will also be well represented with a total of 10 poster and oral presentations. It looks like Z-selectivity will be the hot topic, with presentations from Lauren Rosebrugh, Brendan Quigley, Vanessa Marx and Myles Herbert all dealing with various applications of Z-selective metathesis. Other topics will include rapidly initiating catalysts (Alexandra Sullivan), further CAAC-based ethenolysis work from the collaboration between Grubbs and Guy Bertrand, and some non-metathesis work describing some transition-metal-free C-O bond cleavage along with some anti-Markovnikov Pd-catalyzed oxidation work.
A couple poster sessions caught my eye that contain a number of olefin metathesis presentations. On Monday, April 8th at noon, undergraduate research will be presented in Hall D of the Morial Convention Center, followed by the Sci-Mix from 8-10 pm later that evening.
There are a number of abstracts describing olefin metathesis as a key step in some complex molecule syntheses and relevant pharmaceutical targets. Select examples are:
- Two different members from Chris Vanderwal’s lab at UC Irvine will describe examples of their rearrangement metathesis strategies.
- A report from Steve Martin and co-workers describing efforts towards the total synthesis of antitumor agent IB-00208.
- Studies towards the lipoxygenase inhibitor, Tetrapetalone A, will be described by Peter Carlsen from Alison Frontier’s group at the University of Rochester.
- The formation of bridged heterocycles, important building blocks in drug discovery, will be presented by a group from Pfizer.
- Efforts towards the development of a macrocyclic HCV inhibitor will be described by scientists from Abbott.
A few other abstracts piqued my interest which I have added to my itinerary:
- Hassan Bazzi describing collaborative work with David Bergbreiter using their polyisobutylene-supported Ru-catalysts.
- A group from the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology in Singapore will present a macrocyclization strategy using catalysts constrained within the pores of mesocellular siliceous foams.
- Joe Clark from Steve Diver’s group will discuss efforts to advance the utility of ene-yne metathesis.
- Will we hear about some breakthroughs with iron for olefin metathesis applications by Owen Summerscales and John Gordon from Los Alamos?
- Molecular gyroscopes? Tobias Fiedler from the Gladysz lab at Texas A&M will describe his use of olefin metathesis to synthesis these interesting systems.
- Catherine Cazin will speak about synergistic ligand effects in Ru-catalysts.
And for the polymer lovers out there, the following look interesting:
- Chester Simocko from Ken Wagener’s lab at Florida will talk about using ADMET to prepare precision boronic ester polymers.
- Some collaborative work describing the synthesis of novel monomers for controlling alternating ROMP polymerization from Kathlyn Parker and Nicole Sampson at SUNY Stony Brook will be presented.
- Greg Tew from UMass Amherst will discuss cyclic polymer brushes generated using REMP.
Also, noteworthy of mention, the ACS Award in Industrial Chemistry sponsored by The ACS Division of Business Development and Management and ACS Division of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry will be presented to Dr. Anne Gaffney who is currently the Director of R&D, Specialty Materials at INVISTA™. Previously, Anne spent 5 years at Lummus Technology as the V.P. of Technology Development where she was directly involved in the commercialization of the Olefin Conversion Technology, which converts ethylene and 2-butene into propene via metathesis.
Finally, Materia will be sending a team to New Orleans, led by our Director of Communications, Mr. Tom Buel, along with scientists, Dr. Adam Johns, Dr. Brian Conley and myself. Please stop by and visit us at the ACS Exposition (Booth #811). If you are feeling brave, take our Metathesis Challenge to receive a free Materia “Got Catalyst!” t-shirt. They’re a hot commodity, so stop by early in the show! See you in New Orleans!
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