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Ubichem catalyzes research

03 May 2007 - Scientists from the Ubichem Research facility in Budapest, Hungary, are amongst the authors cited on two papers that describe advances in the use and understanding of the catalytic formation of carbon-carbon bonds.
 
Organocatalytic work on the asymmetric Michael addition - that describes how newly discovered thiourea catalysts efficiently promote the reaction of nitromethane with chalcones with high levels of enantioselectivity - has stimulated much new research in the field. This research was sponsored by Ubichem and published in The American Chemical Society's Organic Letters. The paper, co-authored by Ubichem scientist Tibor Soós, was the journal's most cited article of 2005. A second report, co-authored by Ubichem's Andreás Szabó and József Répási and published in the Journal of Organic Chemistry, describes results obtained in scale-up of Sonogashira chemistry. The group's findings suggest that by using supported palladium in coupling reactions, chemists may be able to exploit the benefits of homogeneous catalysis but retain the ease of heterogeneous catalyst separation.