# New organosulfur-based strategies for efficient and selective organic synthesis.

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS SAN ANTONIO · 2022 · $284,000

## Abstract

Organosulfur compounds have a major role in advancing human health and well-being. A quarter of the most
prescribed drugs contain sulfur, and sulfur is the most common heteroatom in all approved drugs after oxygen
and nitrogen. The sulfur-containing functional groups also enable a variety of reactions that are used to
synthesize natural products, biological probes, therapeutic agents, dyes, and advanced functional materials.
However, the diverse and pluripotent reactivities of organosulfur compounds lead to low chemo-, regio- and
stereoselectivities that adversely affect development of stereo- and regioselective approaches in organic
synthesis. The long-term goal of this research is to advance the field of organic synthesis by streamlining
synthetic access to centrally important organosulfur compounds and systematically developing their regio- and
stereoselective transformations to broad classes of valuable functionalities and structural motifs. The
intermediate oxidation state organosulfur reagents sulfinates have the potential to solve limitations of current
methods of synthesis of organosulfur compounds and to enable new regio- and stereoselective reactions to a
wide range of functionalized small molecules. However, there is a lack of efficient methods of synthesis of
sulfinates directly from abundant precursors and a gap in fundamental understanding of the nearly entirely
unexplored reactivity of sulfinates in the context of stereoselective C‒C bond forming cross-coupling reactions
The overall objective of this research is to develop methods of synthesis of sulfinates from abundant precursors
and to develop regio- and stereoselective C−C bond forming reactions of sulfinates. This objective will be
accomplished by systematically developing three research topics encompassing currently elusive synthetic
methods. In the first part, stereodivergent catalytic cross-coupling reactions of intermediate sulfinates will be
developed into a broad synthetic platform to access conjugated dienes and polyenes with high and predictable
regio-and stereoselectivity. In the second part, a generic platform for harnessing abundant C−H bonds by means
of a regioselective C−H sulfination will be developed. The third part is focused on catalytic alkene sulfination
reactions to draw from abundance and reactivity of alkenes. Upon completion of this research program, a broad
range of currently synthetically challenging functionalized molecules including sulfur-containing ones will
become readily accessible for organic synthesis and drug discovery applications, contributing to improvement
of human healthcare through more efficient syntheses of small molecule biological probes and therapeutic
agents.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10427113
- **Project number:** 5R01GM134371-04
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS SAN ANTONIO
- **Principal Investigator:** Oleg V Larionov
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $284,000
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-07-05 → 2024-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10427113

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10427113, New organosulfur-based strategies for efficient and selective organic synthesis. (5R01GM134371-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10427113. Licensed CC0.

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