Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CHIRAL (Crystals of single chirality via non-equilibrium routes)
Período documentado: 2022-09-01 hasta 2025-02-28
The CHIRAL project addresses the critical challenge of producing enantiomerically pure molecules, which are essential building blocks for bioactive compounds such as pharmaceuticals. Despite advancements in the field, synthesizing the desired enantiomer often requires complex and costly processes. The CHIRAL project aims to revolutionize this area by introducing a novel approach that leverages the ability of crystals to self-sort molecules, using crystal growth to preferentially crystallize the desired enantiomer while suppressing the undesired one.
To achieve this, CHIRAL integrates crystallization processes with racemization reactions, where undesired enantiomers can be converted into desired ones during crystallization. Key objectives include identifying crystallization conditions that favor the desired enantiomer and optimizing racemization reactions to complement the crystallization process.
When successful, CHIRAL will provide groundbreaking insights into fundamental crystallization processes, offering practical and scalable methods for producing enantiomerically pure building blocks. These advancements are expected to significantly reduce costs and complexity in the production of pharmaceuticals and other bioactive compounds, enhancing their accessibility and impact on daily life.
To achieve this, CHIRAL integrates crystallization processes with racemization reactions, where undesired enantiomers can be converted into desired ones during crystallization. Key objectives include identifying crystallization conditions that favor the desired enantiomer and optimizing racemization reactions to complement the crystallization process.
When successful, CHIRAL will provide groundbreaking insights into fundamental crystallization processes, offering practical and scalable methods for producing enantiomerically pure building blocks. These advancements are expected to significantly reduce costs and complexity in the production of pharmaceuticals and other bioactive compounds, enhancing their accessibility and impact on daily life.
CHIRAL’s main achievement so far have been the following:
1. Extensive screening study of crystal stabilities shows that the potential of exploiting crystallization processes is very promising. In addition, the first successful isolations of enantiomerically pure molecules have been achieved.
2. Electrochemical racemization has been developed to induce the successful deracemization of two classes of chiral molecules. The key idea is that an racemization catalysts is generated electrochemically, which in turn interconverts the two enantiomers into each other to drive deracemization towards a desired enantiomer.
current work is focussed on analysing the growth and dissolution rates of crystals to rationally exploit these processes for the deracemization towards the desired enantiomer.
1. Extensive screening study of crystal stabilities shows that the potential of exploiting crystallization processes is very promising. In addition, the first successful isolations of enantiomerically pure molecules have been achieved.
2. Electrochemical racemization has been developed to induce the successful deracemization of two classes of chiral molecules. The key idea is that an racemization catalysts is generated electrochemically, which in turn interconverts the two enantiomers into each other to drive deracemization towards a desired enantiomer.
current work is focussed on analysing the growth and dissolution rates of crystals to rationally exploit these processes for the deracemization towards the desired enantiomer.
Both the electrochemically-induced deracemization and analysis of stabilities of chiral crystals go beyond the current state of the art. On both topics manuscripts have been submitted to peer reviewed journals