Alex Thompson ’13, who interned at biotechnology company Genentech in San Francisco last summer, coauthored a paper in The Journal of Organic Chemistry as a result of his research.  The paper, “The Cyanide Anion as a Leaving Group in Nucleophilic Aromatic Substitution: Synthesis of Quaternary Centers at Azine Heterocycles,” was co-authored with his supervisor, research associate Malcolm Huestis. Thompson worked as an intern in the Small Molecule Drug Discovery Department.

Thompson and Huestis developed a new reaction that will be useful in drug discovery.