Preparation of Homochiral Organic Compounds

Abstract

Due to the extent to which the overlap of organic chemistry and particularly organic synthesis with biology, biochemistry, and medecine is increasing, the necessity of preparing homochiral compounds of a given and predictable absolute configuration is becoming more and more important. Not only because the biological activity of chemical compounds is linked to their absolute configuration in a well-defined way, thus rendering the preparation of homochiral products a conditio sine qua non for medicinal chemistry and for plant protection chemistry, but also since the investigation of compound-enzyme interaction, of receptor chemistry and of all types of chiral recognition above all need the availability of pure enantiomers as do all the current efforts to probe reaction mechanisms — particularly of biogenetic key steps — and the attempts to determine a scientific relationship between optical rotation and absolute configuration. The challenge to develop reliable methods for the preparation of homochiral compounds has been met by synthetic organic chemistry and particularly in the last twenty years we have seen remarkable progress in the efficiency of enantioselective transformations and an unusual increase in the efforts to prepare homochiral compounds.