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CHEM01200604012 Dibakar Goswami - Homi Bhabha National ...

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II. .22 IINTRODUCTIION TO CHIIRALIITY AND ASSYMMETRIIC SSYNTHESSIISS<br />

The demand for chiral compounds, often as single enantiomers, has escalated<br />

sharply in recent years, driven particularly not only by the demands of the pharmaceutical<br />

industry, but also by other applications, including agricultural chemicals, flavors,<br />

fragrances, and materials, especially in chiral polymers and liquid crystals. Two-thirds of<br />

prescription drugs are chiral, with the majority of new chiral drugs being single<br />

enantiomers. This widespread demand for enantiomerically pure chiral compounds has<br />

stimulated intensive research to develop improved methods for synthesizing such<br />

compounds. In addition to this, enantiomerically pure compounds are of most importance<br />

because of the fact that two enantiomers are considered different when screened for<br />

pharmacological activity, 4 and in some cases, it could mean between life and death if the<br />

manufactured drug is not enantiomerically pure. There are many examples of<br />

pharmaceutical drugs, 5 agrochemicals 6 and other chemicals, where the desired biological<br />

property is very much related to the absolute configuration. Some representative examples<br />

are shown in Fig. I.2.1.<br />

The recognition events in biology and the action of drugs that intervene in these<br />

events almost always involve the molecular recognition of a biologically active molecule<br />

by a chiral non-racemic receptor structure. The two enantiomers of a drug molecule cannot<br />

be expected to bind equally well to the receptor and so should cause different biological<br />

responses. Thus, only one enantiomer of the drugs is often endowed with the desired<br />

biological activity, while the other enantiomer is inactive or possesses a different activity<br />

and may cause toxic side effects. For example, in the series of eight possible stereoisomers<br />

of dibromovinyl-2,2-dimethylcyclopropane carboxylic esters (pyrethroid insecticides) the<br />

3

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