Scripps Research Institute Chemists Uncover Powerful New Click Chemistry Reactivity

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Newswise LA JOLLA, CAAugust 14, 2014Chemists led by Nobel laureate K. Barry Sharpless at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have used his click chemistry to uncover unprecedented, powerful reactivity for making new drugs, diagnostics, plastics, smart materials and many other products.

The new SuFExSulfur Fluoride Exchangereactions enable chemists to link molecules of their choice together using derivatives of a common commercial chemical considered essentially inert. The Sharpless team made this chemical reliably and predictably reactive. Astonishingly, acid-base constraints are rarely a concern, though they are central to nature's chemistry and an enormous hurdle for chemists. The stabile linkers are also non-polar and can enter cells, so have potential for crossing the blood-brain barrier.

Consequently, SuFEx gives easy access to an entire, unexplored galaxy within the chemical universe.

This is a new, emergent phenomenon, said Sharpless, the W.M. Keck Professor of Chemistry and member of the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology at TSRI.

Click chemistry, conceived in the mid-90s as a method for discovering new and improving existing chemical reactivity, became universally used in the chemical sciences after the 2002 discovery of copper-catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition (CuAAC). Now SuFEx is the second perfect click reaction to be discovered at TSRI.

The findings by Sharpless and his colleagues were reported online ahead of print by the international chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie.

Chemistry that Clicks

Sharpless shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery and development during the 80s of asymmetric catalytic reactions. Nature routinely makes handed molecules like DNA, which is like a spiral staircase you enter on the left, but chemists could not reliably make left- or right-handed molecules. The Sharpless asymmetric reactions gave chemists that gift with general reactions that made either left- or right-handed products at will.

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Scripps Research Institute Chemists Uncover Powerful New Click Chemistry Reactivity