The ERC-funded project BIDECASEOX ERC-239910 has produced a series of catalysts with broad applicability in various commercial fields associated with synthetic organic chemistry. A key development of the project has been the development of chiral catalysts, based in earth abundant metals, amenable for asymmetric oxidation catalysis employing aqueous hydrogen peroxide, a waste free reagent, as terminal oxidant. These catalysts are very valuable tools in organic synthesis because they constitute a more sustainable, faster and milder alternative to current oxidants in the production of valuable chiral products.
Proof of Concept (PoC) project, named CHIROXCAT, has studied the feasibility of bringing these catalysts into a pre-commercial stage. Towards this end, preparation methodologies have been scaled-up from the original mg-scale, establishing economically optimized multigram scale procedures. Potential industrial applications of these catalysts have been stablished by analyzing the fields of utility of the chiral products made available by the catalysts and also by validating their use in the production of representative chiral molecules of interest to pharmaceutical, medicinal and polymer chemistry, as well as to academic research devoted to organic synthesis of fine chemicals. A market analysis and a technology transfer analysis has been conducted, which concluded that commercialization of the tecnology is feasible and recommended to initiate a spin-out company. As a result of this project, a spin-out company (GIROXCAT) commercializing these catalysts will be launched within the first semester of 2018.
