ISSN: 2041-6792

Clinical Investigation

Modern Chemistry New Findings

Chemists have always been inspired by nature. A few years back, researchers dreamt of a new kind of catalysts that, like most natural enzymes, would not require the use of expensive metals. “Organocatalysis” was born in the late 1990s and it has not stopped growing ever since. According to Paolo Melchiorre, one of the leading experts in the field, organocatalysis was successful because “[It] was quite democratic, everyone could have access to it without needing expensive reagents or a glovebox, which allowed many young researchers to start their independent careers, and quickly assembled a community of international experts that become a great incubator of ideas for catalysis without metals,” he explains. Initially, some chemists criticized organocatalysis for not being as green as it claimed to be—it needed high catalyst loads and, moreover, it was hard to recover the catalyst after the reaction, which seem to go against the very definition of catalysis. However, Melchiorre points out how researchers have overcome most of these problems. He says that the original focus of organocatalysis was “to develop new methods rather than decreasing the catalyst loads.” Chemists have always been inspired by nature. A few years back, researchers dreamt of a new kind of catalysts that, like most natural enzymes, would not require the use of expensive metals. “Organocatalysis” was born in the late 1990s and it has not stopped growing ever since. According to Paolo Melchiorre, one of the leading experts in the field, organocatalysis was successful because “[It] was quite democratic, everyone could have access to it without needing expensive reagents or a glovebox, which allowed many young researchers to start their independent careers, and quickly assembled a community of international experts that become a great incubator of ideas for catalysis without metals,” he explains. Initially, some chemists criticized organocatalysis for not being as green as it claimed to be—it needed high catalyst loads and, moreover, it was hard to recover the catalyst after the reaction, which seem to go against the very definition of catalysis. However, Melchiorre points out how researchers have overcome most of these problems. He says that the original focus of organocatalysis was “to develop new methods rather than decreasing the catalyst loads.”    

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