Decarboxylative epoxidation of carboxylic acids for accelerating synthesis of oxiranes and derivatives
Ziyang Li, Qing Sun, Jiangtao Lin, Zou Chen, Ligang Huang, Yu Jia, Mingqian Zhou, You Wu, Mengjia Wang, Chao Shu · 2026
Read Decarboxylative epoxidation of carboxylic acids for accelerating synthesis of oxiranes and derivatives by Ziyang Li, Qing Sun, Jiangtao Lin, Zou Chen, Ligang Huang, Yu Jia, Mingqian Zhou, You Wu, Mengjia Wang, Chao Shu (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13526797.txt.
Description
Li and colleagues reported a light-driven route in 2026 that turns common carboxylic acids directly into oxiranes, the three-membered oxygen rings prized as building blocks in drugs and materials. Standard epoxidation leans on specific alkenes or halohydrins, which limits starting materials. Their method shines visible light on redox-active esters of the acids together with designed allylic peroxides, with no metal, oxidant, or photocatalyst needed.
The reaction worked across primary, secondary, and tertiary aliphatic acids and tolerated amino acids, sugars, drugs, and their derivatives. A donor-acceptor pairing with a common base and a tert-butyl oxygen radical that shuttles hydrogen atoms drive the fast, mild conversion. The team showed one-step routes to medicinal scaffolds from the scaled-up products and extended the trick to five related bond-cutting epoxidations. They offer the protocol as a unified shortcut for making and editing drug-like molecules.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Ziyang Li, Qing Sun, Jiangtao Lin, Zou Chen, Ligang Huang, Yu Jia, Mingqian Zhou, You Wu, Mengjia Wang, Chao Shu |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 37 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |