Posts Tagged ‘stereo-electronics’

Artemisinin: are stereo-electronics at the core of its (re)activity?

Sunday, April 13th, 2014

Around 100 tons of the potent antimalarial artemisinin is produced annually; a remarkable quantity given its very unusual and fragile looking molecular structure (below). When I looked at this, I was immediately struck by a thought: surely this is a classic molecule for analyzing stereoelectronic effects (anomeric and gauche). Here this aspect is explored.

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