# Radical-Mediated Atom-Transfer Strategies for Chemical Synthesis

> **NIH NIH R35** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO · 2024 · $356,451

## Abstract

Schmidt – Project Summary
Radical species play important roles in biological systems linked not only to dysfunctional cell proliferation and
other disease pathways, but also in essential healthy processes necessary for life. Understanding the reactivity
profiles of open-shell carbon, oxygen, sulfur, and other heteroatomic-centered radical intermediates is crucial to
understanding how these processes occur and to propose reasonable mechanisms for currently ill-defined
pathways.
Studying and understanding reactivity profiles of radical intermediates can also result in the development of new
synthetic methodologies with the potential to streamline and make the synthesis of existing pharmaceuticals
more efficient and provide access to the next generation of therapeutics and tools for imaging, diagnosis,
treatment, and prevention.
This proposal is built on the prior and concurrent efforts of the PI’s research group using phosphorous-based
reagents to unmask carbon and heteroatom-centered radicals from untraditional precursors. This general
platform has achieved the regioselective construction of C-N bonds which are present in a substantial portion of
FDA approve pharmaceuticals and are often involved in the mode of biological activity. These radical-mediated
approaches leverage the favorable thermodynamics of atom-transfer processes to achieve new bond formations
from common chemical functionalities. Future studies will continue to explore the potential of this general
platform by investigating the ability of other common functional groups to be analogously unmasked to achieve
new bond formations. We anticipate that this work may lead to new strategies in complex molecule construction
for use in the preparation of new molecular therapeutics and tools in chemical biology.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10645232
- **Project number:** 5R35GM138107-04
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
- **Principal Investigator:** Valerie Anne Schmidt
- **Activity code:** R35 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $356,451
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2020-08-01 → 2026-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10645232

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10645232, Radical-Mediated Atom-Transfer Strategies for Chemical Synthesis (5R35GM138107-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10645232. Licensed CC0.

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