Recent Advances in Catalytic Asymmetric Synthesis

1Introduction The rapid development in the genomics and proteomics research has brought about an unprecedented number of potential new drug targets, which translates into an ever-increasing need to rapidly assemble highly pure small molecules (Mr≤850) with an increased structural complexity ‘to identify a small molecule partner for every gene product'[1]. Simultaneously, our increasing awareness of environmental aspects of synthesis places a nearly orthogonal set of requirements for the kinds of syntheses admissible in the future which can be expressed as a rule of 6S' s: selectivity and speed of the syntheses; safety, stability and sustainability of the processes; and scatter of diversity of the attainable products will be the key factors guiding the search for new synthetic organic chemistry.