In Jan. 2020, the manuscript titled “Bisguanidinium-Catalyzed Epoxidation of Allylic and Homoallylic Amines Under Phase Transfer Conditions” was accepted by ACS Catalysis and selected as cover article. This work was contributed by Dr. Xinyi Ye from the group of Marine Drugs in the College of Pharmaceutical Science, Zhejiang University of Technology.

      Recently, phase transfer (ion pair) catalysis becomes a hot topic in organocatalysis. It is of great potential in application of chiral drug synthesis. The article mainly demonstrated chiral cation assisted by functional anion to catalyze drug precursor, which led to a result of excellent yield and high enantioselectivity. After few steps of further transformation, the synthesis of (-)-Venlafaxine was achieved.

      Dr. Xinyi Ye worked with Prof. Tan Choon Hong from Nanyang Technological University in field of asymmetric ion pair catalyzed oxidation. Up till now, they have made contributions on developing methodologies for various drugs synthesis, such as, proton inhibitor - Lansoprazole and central nervous drug – Armodafinil. More work of novel ion pair catalyst and different type of reactions will be pursued in future.

Link： https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acscatal.9b04862