School of Chemistry Colloquium: Dr Roly Armstrong Twists and Turns in Stereoselective Amide Synthesis

Fuelled by an increasing requirement within the pharmaceutical industry for 3D building blocks, there is significant demand for new synthetic methods targeting chiral molecules with precisely defined stereochemistry. The focus of this talk will be upon C–N atropisomeric amides, which are a fascinating and underexplored class of stereogenic material whose chirality arises from restricted rotation about a twisted carbon-nitrogen single bond. The talk will explore: (i) how the presence (or absence!) of atropisomerism in new scaffolds can be probed experimentally; (ii) how this information can be used to develop new catalytic asymmetric strategies for their synthesis; (iii) how the resulting new materials can be applied to design new biologically active molecules.