Enantioselective Synthesis - Chiral Pool Synthesis

Chiral Pool Synthesis

Chiral pool synthesis is the easiest approach: A chiral starting material is manipulated through successive reactions using achiral reagents that retain its chirality to obtain the desired target molecule. This is especially attractive for target molecules having the similar chirality to a relatively inexpensive naturally occurring building-block such as a sugar or amino acid. However, the number of possible reactions the molecule can undergo is restricted, and tortuous synthetic routes may be required. Also, this approach requires a stoichiometric amount of the enantiopure starting material, which may be rather expensive if not occurring in nature, whereas chiral catalysis requires only a catalytic amount of chiral material.