Chiara Falcini (PhD candidate 05) and professor Gonzalo de Gonzalo have written a review about Deep Eutectic Solvent (DES) used as catalysts, published at the beginning of 2024 in the journal Catalysts for the Special Issue entitled “Catalytic Procedures for the Synthesis of Pharmaceutical Active Compounds in Deep Eutectic Solvents”. This paper regards mainly the use of DES as catalysts for the preparation of APIs. DESs have appeared in the last years as an appealing alternative to classical organic solvents, due to their valuable environmental properties. In addition, these compounds, formed by the combination of one hydrogen bond donor with a hydrogen bond acceptor at a defined stoichiometric ratio, present other valuable activities. Thus, DESs can also be employed as catalysts through hydrogen-bond interactions in different chemical transformations, substituting hazardous reagents and solvents.
The search for novel and more environmentally friendly catalysts is an area of interest of pharmaceutical chemists, and therefore, the efforts made in the application of DESs as catalysts in the synthesis of APIs or its precursors are described, focusing mainly on condensations, nucleophilic additions to carbonyl moieties, and multicomponent reactions. The study on these solvents is important to the actual environmental problem for the society, furthermore the PhD’s thesis work will be mainly focused on the use of DES as catalysts for reaction cascades, so it was a good starting point to overview the employment of DES as catalysts.
Please find below the link to read this exciting review.
“Deep Eutectic Solvents as Catalysts in the Synthesis of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients and Precursors” Catalysts 2024, 14, 120. https://doi.org/10.3390/catal14020120
