Catalytic Substrate- and Site-Selective Transesterification

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Substrate- and site-selective esterification is a powerful synthetic tool to reduce the number of steps required for the synthesis of complex molecules. To address the challenges associated with achieving such selectivity, a variety of strategies have been developed. However, these methods generally require highly reactive acylating reagents. We have developed the first catalytic process for a substrate- and site-selective transesterification using nonactivated esters as acylating reagents. The precisely engineered cavity surrounding the central metal in the sodium- and magnesium-based catalysts enables efficient steric discrimination between competing reaction sites.