Strategic efficiency — The new thrust for synthetic organic chemists

A standard for gauging the efficiency of synthetic strategies has been proposed. Synthetic efficiency is correlated to the molecular-complexity index, which is the cumulative total number of chiral centers, independent functional groups, and rings contained in a molecule. The number of reaction steps for an efficient synthetic design must be smaller than that of molecular-complexity index. This standard will motivate organic chemists to work harder on the synthetic design prior to execution.