Targeted synthesis of natural products with light
Photoreactions are driven by light energy and are vital to
the synthesis of many natural substances. Since many of these substances are
also useful as active medical agents, chemists try to produce them
synthetically. But in most cases only one of the possible products has the
right spatial structure to make it effective. Researchers at the Technische
Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) have now developed a methodology for one of these
photoreactions that allows them to produce only the specific molecular variant
desired.