Snyder Publishes Paper in Organic Letters

Nicole L. Snyder, assistant professor of chemistry, and her collaborators at the University of South Florida published a paper titled "Asymmetric Co(II)-Catalyzed Cyclopropanation with Succinimidyl Diazoacetate: General Synthesis of Chiral Cyclopropyl Carboxamides" in the most recent edition of Organic Letters (Org. Lett. 2009, 11 (11), 2273–2276). 

The article features a highly effective porphyrin-based catalyst that can be used to cyclopropanate substrates in high yields with excellent diastereo- and enantioselectivity, and presents a new method for generating optically active cyclopropyl carboxamides from cyclopropyl succinimidyl esters. Cyclopropyl carboxamides are important functional moieties in pharmaceutical compounds. For example, Milnaciprin, a compound used to treat fibromyalgia, contains a cyclopropyl carboxamide group. The worked described in Snyder's most recent paper could be used to improve the synthesis of Milnaciprin by shortening the synthesis by several steps.