Department of Chemistry
POB Group News 2018
December 2018
- The latest paper from our ongoing collaboration with Dr Will Unsworth and Prof. Richard Taylor is out in ACS Catalysis. Congratulations to Ho! "Merging π-Acid and Pd Catalysis: Dearomatizing Spirocyclization/Cross-Coupling Cascade Reactions of Alkyne-Tethered Aromatics" Hon Eong Ho, Thomas C. Stephens , Thomas J. Payne, Peter O’Brien , Richard J. K. Taylor, and William P. Unsworth. ACS Catal., 2019, 9, 504-510
- A sucsessful year was rounded out with the POB group Christmas curry.
November 2018
- We held our last meeting of the 3-D Fragments Consortium of industrial partners. Thanks to Astex, AstraZeneca, Lilly, Pfizer and Vernalis for all of the input into the project.
- Peter gave a research seminar at Oxford University and talked about 'New routes to nitrogen, oxygen, and sulphur heterocycles: exploring 3D pharmaceutical space'.
October 2018
- Welcome to new PhD student Matthew, who will be working on lithiation of nitrogen heterocycles, and to Masters student Andres who will be working on methods for fragment elaboration.
- Welcome back to Giordaina Hartley who is carrying out a PhD on lithiated sulfoximines supervised by ex-POB group member Masa Atobe from Asahi Kasei.
- Welcome to MChem students Tom French and Freddy Weaver who will be working on the lithiation of oxygen and sulfur heterocycles.
- James and Hanna presented posters at FBLD 2018 in San Diego on 7th-10th October. Both disclosed their work on the 3-D fragments project. They were accompanied by long-time collaborator and conference organiser Prof Rod Hubbard and co-workers Dr John Darby, Eleni Makraki and Bas Lamoree. Former POB group visiting researcher Masa Atobe (Asahi KASEI) was also present.
September 2018
- Final year PhD students Paul Jones and Tom Downes gave presentations at the AstraZeneca CASE Conference on 6-7th September in Macclesfield. Both talked about their work on the 3-D fragments project. York was very well represented at the meeting (see photo below of Peter, Paul and Tom with other people with York links): ex-York AstraZeneca employees included Darren Stead (PhD in the O’Brien group), Steve Raw (PhD and post-doc in the Taylor group) and James Douglas (York undergraduate); PhD student Jennifer Nelson (currently with Matt Gaunt) was a York undergraduate; Susannah Coote (Lancaster University) (PhD in the O’Brien group) is a supervisor of one of the other PhD student presenters.
- PhD student Hanna Klein and Peter attended the EU ITN FRAGNET Meeting on 10-15th September in Budapest. Hanna was accompanied by Hubbard group PhD students Eleni Makraki and Bas Lamoree and ex-York undergraduate David Hamilton (currently carrying out a PhD in Amsterdam). All the York PhD researchers gave great talks on their recent work. There was also time for socialising and networking, including an evening meal on a river boat on the Danube.
- Three members of the group, Paul Jones, Tom Downes and Nico Seling, presented posters at a postgraduate meeting organised by the RSC Heterocyclic & Synthesis Group, which was held at GlaxoSmithKline, Stevenage on 20th September. Tom also gave an excellent flash poster advert.
- Welcome to new Masters student Alex. She will working on the C-H functionalisation of sulfoximines using organolithium reagents.
August 2018
- We have published a review on the efforts to explore lead-like and fragment-like chemical space in Chemical and Biological Synthesis: Enabling Approaches for Understanding Biology published by the RSC (Editors: Nick J Westwood, Adam Nelson). "Lead- and Fragment-oriented Synthesis, in Chemical and Biological Synthesis: Enabling Approaches for Understanding Biology, 2018, pp. 74-113 DOI: 10.1039/9781788012805-00074"
June 2018
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Giordaina and Tom Downes attended the Oxford Synthesis Summer Conference on 25-26 June. Giordaina presented a poster on her MSc research entitled ”α-Functionalisation of Cyclic Sulfoximines: Scope and Diastereoselectivity” and Tom gave a poster on the 3-D Fragments projects in the group. Tom also gave a well-received flash presentation entitled “Design and Synthesis of a 3-D Fragment Library”.
- Our latest paper is out in Heterocycles. A Synthetic and Spectroscopic Investigation of the Asymmetric α-Lithiation-trapping of Six-Membered N-Boc Heterocycles using Alexakis Diamines. Heterocycles. 2018, DOI: 10.3987/COM-18-S(T)87
April 2018
- Paul gave an excellent talk on the design and synthesis of 3D fragments at the SCI's 29th Regional Postgraduate Symposia on Novel Organic Chemistry at Newcastle University.
- The POB group went to the RSC Organic Division North East Regional Meeting 2018 held at the University of Leeds, with most of the group presenting posters.
- Congratulations to Paul, who won a prize at the Johnson Matthey Poster Competition for third year PhD students!
February 2018
- The latest paper from our ongoing collaboration with Dr Will Unsworth and Prof. Richard Taylor is out in Organic Letters. Congratulations to Ho! "Ag(I)-Catalyzed Synthesis of Azabicyclic Alkaloid Frameworks from Ketimine-Tethered Ynones: Total Synthesis of Indolizidine 209D" Hon Eong Ho, Michael J. James, Peter O’Brien , Richard J. K. Taylor, and William P. Unsworth. Org. Lett. 2018, 20, 1439–1443
January 2018
- Hanna attended a Fragments Training Network (FragNet) meeting in Barcelona, Spain between 22nd-26th January. FragNet is part of a EU funded Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network (ITN) set up to train a new generation of researchers in all aspects of Fragment-Based Ligand Design (FBLD).
