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Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry

 

Yusuf Hamied 1702 Professor of Chemistry

New Catalytic Strategies for Chemical Synthesis

Despite the changing face of chemistry, the importance of synthesis - the ability to generate molecules in a controlled fashion - has not diminished. However, the increasingly complex synthetic problems being posed by nature, medicine and materials demand new reactivity concepts and strategies in order to meet these challenges.

Our group is interested in the development of new catalytic strategies for chemical synthesis that engage novel reactivity concepts to enable the rapid generation of architecturally complex molecules and natural products. One of our key aims is to be able to construct natural products from simple building blocks in a single step, without the need for reactivity inducing functional groups and with the ability to control the stereochemistry.

In this way, we hope to be able to develop a chemo-catalytic equivalent to Nature's biosynthetic machinery that will enable us to build any molecule we want. Our approach to this is focussed on three main research programmes:

(A) metal catalyzed C-H bond functionalization,

(B) catalytic asymmetric synthesis using small molecule organic catalysts,

(C) cascade strategies for natural product synthesis.

In addition to this, many of the molecules that we are able to synthesise have interesting biological properties, and so we are also able to develop chemical biology applications from our synthetic chemistry projects.

Professor Gaunt discusses his research

Take a tour of the Yusuf Hamied Lab for Chemical Synthesis & Catalysis

Publications

Visible-Light-Mediated Modification and Manipulation of Biomacromolecules
VM Lechner, M Nappi, PJ Deneny, S Folliet, JCK Chu, MJ Gaunt
– Chem Rev
(2021)
122,
1752
Multicomponent alkene azidoarylation by anion-mediated dual catalysis
A Bunescu, Y Abdelhamid, MJ Gaunt
– Nature
(2021)
598,
597
Myths of high-throughput experimentation and automation in chemistry
MJ Gaunt, JM Janey, DM Schultz, T Cernak
– Chem
(2021)
7,
2259
Visible light-mediated radical fluoromethylation via halogen atom transfer activation of fluoroiodomethane.
PJ Deneny, R Kumar, MJ Gaunt
– Chemical Science
(2021)
12,
12812
Visible-Light-Mediated Carbonyl Alkylative Amination to All-Alkyl α‑Tertiary Amino Acid Derivatives
J Blackwell, M Gaunt, R Kumar
– Journal of the American Chemical Society
(2021)
Visible-Light-Mediated Carbonyl Alkylative Amination to All-Alkyl α-Tertiary Amino Acid Derivatives.
JH Blackwell, R Kumar, MJ Gaunt
– J Am Chem Soc
(2021)
143,
1598
Selective chemical functionalization at N6-methyladenosine residues in DNA enabled by visible-light-mediated photoredox catalysis
M Nappi, A Hofer, S Balasubramanian, MJ Gaunt
– J Am Chem Soc
(2020)
142,
21484
Visible-light mediated carbonyl trifluoromethylative amination as a practical method for the synthesis of β-trifluoromethyl tertiary alkylamines.
K Kolahdouzan, R Kumar, MJ Gaunt
– Chemical Science
(2020)
11,
12089
Selective Chemical Functionalization at N6 mdA Residues in DNA
M Nappi, A Hofer, S Balasubramanian, M Gaunt
– ChemRxiv
(2020)
Synthesis and Reactivity of Stable Alkyl-Pd(IV) Complexes Relevant to Monodentate N-Directed C(sp3)–H Functionalization Processes
WG Whitehurst, MJ Gaunt
– Journal of the American Chemical Society
(2020)
142,
14169
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Research Group

Research Interest Groups

Telephone number

01223 336318

Email address

mjg32@cam.ac.uk