What If Total Syntheses Had Only 25 Steps to Work In?

In conclusion, this article tries to show how various strategies may be used to streamline and to shorten otherwise long synthetic routes to complex target molecules. The reader may get the impression that it pays very well to think intensively about cascade reactions, intramolecular cycloadditions, suitable starting materials and so on, instead of plunging into a brute-force and therefore mostly inefficient sequence. After all, there is an iron maxim: if a target cannot be reached within, say, 25 steps, it is better to drop it. For what you will get is a heroic synthesis, at best, but never an efficient one.

A 25-step limit would chop an awful lot out of the synthetic literature, wouldn't it? But it's not fair to apply that retrospectively. What if we apply it from here on out, though? What would the total synthetic landscape look like then?

Source: In the Pipeline - March 17, 2014 Category: Chemists Tags: Chemical News Source Type: blogs