gamma-Peptide Foldamers for Bifunctional Iminium/Enamine and NHC/Iminium Organocatalysis – ATzC_NHC

Enzymes are proteins able to effectively catalyze highly complex biochemical reactions in mild reaction conditions but are limited to the arsenal of reactions that have emerged during natural evolution in compliance with their intrinsic nature, three-dimensional structures and dynamics. Nevertheless, proteins have inspired many efforts to design artificial catalysts from bio-inspired and highly structured artificial platforms, called foldamers. Although innovative, the catalytic and asymmetric control gained with such platforms is still far from the gold standard provided by enzymes. Recent advances in this field have emphasized cooperating bifunctional catalysis as an attractive strategy to enhance catalytic activity at higher levels of stereo-differentiation. The ATzC_NHC project aims at exploring these concepts by using thiazole-based ?-peptide foldamers as platforms for enamine/iminium and iminium/NHC organocatalysis.