‘Twas the night before Christmas 🎄 and… The final version of our paper with Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) describing the facile decomposition of commonly used sodium alkoxide bases under air is now in press in ACS Catalysis. These bases maintain their appearance as free-flowing white or off-white solids while undergoing a complex decomposition process to various inorganic salts that is triggered by initial reaction with CO₂ in the air. Congrats to the team: Bob, Aunji, Ryan, and Steve from BMS; and Joe, Van, Taeho, Omar, and Roman from Scripps!

Click here for a link to the paper: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acscatal.0c04124

The work first appeared as pre-print back in June: https://chemrxiv.org/articles/preprint/An_Under-Appreciated_Source_of_Reproducibility_Issues_in_Cross-Coupling_Solid-State_Decomposition_of_Primary_Sodium_Alkoxides_in_Air/12818234

Santa’s first delivery of the season has arrived 🎅 🎄 🎁 , with official acceptance and publication of our paper on [3+2] alkene (hetero)annulation in Nat. Commun. The project was carried out in collaboration with the Liu group at the University of Pittsburgh and the chemists from the Oncology Medicinal Chemistry Department at Pfizer, Inc. By taking advantage of a unique Pd(II)/Pd(IV) pathway that begins with directed nucleopalladation, this transformation conveniently furnishes indolines, dihydrobenzofurans, and indanes with trans stereochemistry across the ring juncture. The practicality of the method stems from its use of readily available alkenyl amide substrates and ambiphilic aryl halide coupling partners. Bravo to Hui-Qi, Pranali, Andrew, and Hou-Xiang from our lab, Ilia from the Liu lab, and Joyann, Shouliang, Michelle, and Indra from Pfizer.

Click here for a link to the paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20182-4

The work first appeared as pre-print back in June: https://chemrxiv.org/articles/preprint/Anti-Selective_3_2_Hetero_annulation_of_Non-Conjugated_Alkenes_via_Directed_Nucleopalladation/12510038

The Engle lab continued its long-standing tradition of closing out the year with festivities—this time in Zoom format. We kicked things off with a Secret Santa gift exchange, complete with a full slate of predictions/guesses of who had whom, which were quickly debunked! Hermione enjoyed her gifts from Phillippa so much, she couldn’t resist showing off her new bow. We finished the night with several rounds of “Among Us”, rekindling our shared love of all Werewolf/Mafia-inspired games. Despite the challenges 2020 has thrown our way, we’ve gotten through it together, and we are looking forward to a safer and less Zoom-ful 2021!