sponsored by the Aldrich Chemical Company Developing a Practical Toolbox for Asymmetric Catalytic Reactions Xumu Zhang Department of Chemistry Pennsylvania State University

Thursday, October 21, 2004 Dinner at the Alumni Memorial Union Program at the Todd Wehr Chemistry Building Marquette University

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During the last three decades, chemists have made major progress in discovering man-made catalysts to perform this challenging task. Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded in asymmetric catalysis to Dr. Knowles, Professors Noyori and Sharpless in 2001.

The research in my group addresses fundamental and practical problems in this field by developing a diverse set of chiral ligands (a chiral toolbox approach) which combine with transition metals to form effective catalysts. We are also inventing new metal-catalyzed reactions through screening of reaction conditions. Our technologies have been licensed to several companies (the first generation is licensed to DSM-Catalytica and the second generation is licensed to Chiral Quest) for the synthesis of chiral molecules in a highly efficient, cost-effective and environmentally compliant way. Selected chiral ligands developed by us are PennPhos, BICP, Ambox; TunePhos, PN, DIOP*, KetalPhos, f-KetalPhos, Binaphane, f-Binaphane, SK-Phos, o-BINAP, o-BIPHEP, FAP and TangPhos.

Transitional metal complexes (Ru, Rh and Ir) with our chiral ligands are highly enantioselective (up to 99%ee) and active (up to 50,000 turnovers) catalysts for hydrogenation of many types of ketones, imines and olefins. These methods provide practical ways to make chiral amines, alcohols, alpha and beta-amino acids, acids, aminoalchohols and other chiral building blocks.

We have also invented new metal-catalyzed reactions such as Rh-catalyzed asymmetric ene reaction and Ag-catalyzed [3+2] cycloaddition using our toolbox approach.

Xumu Zhang is Professor of Chemistry at the Pennsylvania State University in University Park (State College) Pennsylvania. He has been at penn State since 1994. Xumu received his bachelor's degree from Wuhan University (Hubei, China) and his masters degree from the Chinese Science Academy in Fuzhou. He also rec4eived a masters degree from the University of California-San Diego. His PhD was earned at Stanford University in Organic and Inorganic Chemistry. His thesis title was "Synthetic Analogues of Cytochrome P-450 and Dioxygen-Binding Proteirn". professor james Collman was his advisor. After performing post-doctoral research under Professor Collman, Xunu joined the faculty at Penn State.

In 2000, Xumu founded Chiral Quest, a company dedicated to providing innovative asymmetric products and services to the pharmaceutical/biotechnology and fine chemical industries with an array of catalysis products and technology - based on proprietary expertise - designed to facilitate the development of chiral molecules, which comprise over one-third of all drugs currently on the market.

Xumu is on the editorial board of "Enantiomer" and is a consultant to several pharmaceutical companies. A recent C&E News article may be found at http://research.chem.psu.edu/xzgroup/Assets/C&ENzhang.txt.pdf.