With this new award, the Chemical Synthesis Program supports Professor Margarita Ortiz of University of Puerto Rico at Humacao in a project investigating the development of new borate based catalysts for the selective preparation of a variety of important chemical substances. Existing catalysts used for these purposes are often expensive, difficult to purify, highly sensitive to air and moisture, and harmful to the environment. This project will design and prepare catalysts that are readily and inexpensively available, easy to handle and environmentally friendly. Since the research will be carried out by undergraduates, it will be an excellent way to train a new generation of Puerto Rican scientists.
This project will investigate the preparation of new chiral spiroamino borate esters to be used for the chemo- and stereoselective asymmetric reduction of ketones and their derivatives. These studies are designed to provide fundamental knowledge of the enantioselective catalytic reduction of these substrates and to establish new protocols for the chiral synthesis of amino acids and alcohols.
