Sussex Drug Discovery Centre

The Huisgen cycloaddition or ‘click chemistry’ could certainly take part of the blame for the resurgence of one of the bad boys of organic chemistry: azide. Coming from a large – Risk averse – pharma, I have always tried to avoid such fragments, possibly due to the implications and paperwork if (or more likely when) it goes wrong. So when an article with ‘Azide’, ‘Facile’ and ‘Safe’ is published it’s certainly worth reading.

The article from Wang’s group is looking at the diazotransfer reaction converting a primary amine to the corresponding azide.

The pre-Goddard-Borger and Stick era was using triflate azides as diazotransfer reagents which proved to be prone to explosion (Figure 1).

Figure 1

The Wang article here is looking at a safe protocol to the imidazole-1-sulfonyl azide (compound 4, Figure 2) reagents developed and optimised over the last 6 years.

Figure 2

Key requirements to the described…

View original post 374 more words