Beyond symmetric self-assembly and effective molarity: unlocking functional enzyme mimics with robust organic cages

• Keith G. Andrews

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2025, 21, 421–443, doi:10.3762/bjoc.21.30

• triad (red) was hoped to activate the benzyl alcohol nucleophile, but it does not activate (polarize) the electrophile (substrate ester group). (B) One of Rebek’s “clefts” [108][109]. The rigidly organized carboxylic acids both bind the substrate and the transition state for hydrolysis of an acetal. (A

Facile one-pot reduction of β-nitrostyrenes to phenethylamines using sodium borohydride and copper(II) chloride

• Laura D’Andrea and
• Simon Jademyr

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2025, 21, 39–46, doi:10.3762/bjoc.21.4

• ); 13C NMR (151 MHz, D2O) δ 122.41, 124.77, 129.01, 133.06; ESI-MS m/z: [M + 1]+ 171.0; found, 171.1; mp 190–191 °C. Benzyl alcohol (9b): The product formation was monitored by TLC using Hex/EtOAc (6:1). Once cooled to room temperature, the mixture was acidified with 20% HCl solution and extracted with

Synthesis of 2H-azirine-2,2-dicarboxylic acids and their derivatives

• Anastasiya V. Agafonova,
• Mikhail S. Novikov and
• Alexander F. Khlebnikov

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2024, 20, 3191–3197, doi:10.3762/bjoc.20.264

• a 4 mmol scale gave dimethyl ester 11a in 99% yield. Unexpectedly, the reaction of branched alcohols with diacyl chloride 2a failed. For example, the reaction with benzyl alcohol resulted in the formation of an overly complex mixture of products. Adding bases to trap HCl did not improve the

Hypervalent iodine-mediated intramolecular alkene halocyclisation

• Charu Bansal,
• Oliver Ruggles,
• Albert C. Rowett and
• Alastair J. J. Lennox

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2024, 20, 3113–3133, doi:10.3762/bjoc.20.258

• regeneration of 1-fluoro-3,3- dimethylbenziodoxole (12) in 91% yield from isolated benzyl alcohol after the fluorination reaction. A mechanism of the reaction was proposed (Scheme 13) in which the iodane-activated alkene is attacked by fluoride and the aromatic ring, to form a fluorinated phenonium

Advances in radical peroxidation with hydroperoxides

• Oleg V. Bityukov,
• Pavel Yu. Serdyuchenko,
• Andrey S. Kirillov,
• Gennady I. Nikishin,
• Vera A. Vil’ and
• Alexander O. Terent’ev

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2024, 20, 2959–3006, doi:10.3762/bjoc.20.249

• . The oxidation of benzyl alcohol 62 with TBHP results in aldehyde C, HAT from which by tert-butoxy radical A leads to the C-centered radical D. Subsequent recombination of radicals D and B provides the target product 63. An enantioselective peroxidation method of alkylaromatics with TBHP using chiral

• ]. The set of tert-butoxy A and tert-butylperoxy B radicals are formed from TBHP during the Cu(I)/Cu(II) redox cycle. The Cu(II)/TBHP system also provides oxidation of benzyl alcohol 80 to the corresponding aldehyde C. The reaction of isocyanate 81 with aldehyde C generates oxazoline D, HAT from D by the

Facile preparation of fluorine-containing 2,3-epoxypropanoates and their epoxy ring-opening reactions with various nucleophiles

• Yutaro Miyashita,
• Sae Someya,
• Tomoko Kawasaki-Takasuka,
• Tomohiro Agou and
• Takashi Yamazaki

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2024, 20, 2421–2433, doi:10.3762/bjoc.20.206

• detection of benzaldehyde which was considered to be formed by the NaClO-mediated oxidation of benzyl alcohol generated by hydrolysis. Changing the oxidizing reagent to crystalline NaClO·5H2O nicely solved the problem with the realization of 86% isolated yield of 2b by the utilization of this oxidant (2

Efficient one-step synthesis of diarylacetic acids by electrochemical direct carboxylation of diarylmethanol compounds in DMSO

• Hisanori Senboku and
• Mizuki Hayama

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2024, 20, 2392–2400, doi:10.3762/bjoc.20.203

• dioxide; Introduction Electrochemical reduction of benzyl alcohol derivatives can induce reductive cleavage of a C(sp3)–O bond [1] at the benzylic position to generate the corresponding benzylic anion species. This protocol has been frequently applied to electrochemical carboxylation [2][3][4][5][6][7][8

Challenge N- versus O-six-membered annulation: FeCl₃-catalyzed synthesis of heterocyclic N,O-aminals

• Giacomo Mari,
• Lucia De Crescentini,
• Gianfranco Favi,
• Fabio Mantellini,
• Diego Olivieri and
• Stefania Santeusanio

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2024, 20, 1412–1420, doi:10.3762/bjoc.20.123

• more encumbered alcohol, such as benzyl alcohol, which is not sequestered by MS 4 Å. As a matter of fact, the new benzylated N,O-aminal 7 was successfully obtained in 70% isolated yield as the sole product (experiment D, Scheme 5). In this latter case, the benzyl alcohol presumably reacts with the

Manganese-catalyzed C–C and C–N bond formation with alcohols via borrowing hydrogen or hydrogen auto-transfer

• Mohd Farhan Ansari,
• Atul Kumar Maurya,
• Abhishek Kumar and
• Saravanakumar Elangovan

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2024, 20, 1111–1166, doi:10.3762/bjoc.20.98

• alcohols [39]. Various ligands were screened for the N-alkylation of m-toluidine with benzyl alcohol using Mn(CO)5Br (5 mol %) and t-BuOK (1 equiv) in toluene at 140 °C (Scheme 9). Among these, L1 and L2 showed better activity for the N-alkylation reactions. Different substituted anilines and alcohols

• loading (0.5 mol %) and mild reaction conditions (60–100 °C) were employed for this transformation. Aromatic amines gave good yields with benzyl alcohol at 60 °C, but 1,1-phenylethylamine, linear aliphatic amine and benzylamine required 100 °C to achieve the good yields (Scheme 12). Similarly, the N

• ]. Symmetrical, unsymmetrical, and cyclic azoarenes were studied with benzyl alcohol using catalyst Mn9 (5 mol %) and t-BuOK (2 equiv) at 130 °C for 24 h in octane, resulting in the corresponding N-alkylated amines with up to 96% yield (Scheme 19). On the other hand, various aromatic and aliphatic primary and

Synthesis of 1,4-azaphosphinine nucleosides and evaluation as inhibitors of human cytidine deaminase and APOBEC3A

• Maksim V. Kvach,
• Stefan Harjes,
• Harikrishnan M. Kurup,
• Geoffrey B. Jameson,
• Elena Harjes and
• Vyacheslav V. Filichev

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2024, 20, 1088–1098, doi:10.3762/bjoc.20.96

• phosphinic acid 7 was further protected with benzyl alcohol by a procedure adopted from reference [67] using TBTU and Et3N in refluxing dichloroethane. Compound 8 was obtained in 65% yield after silica gel column chromatography. To synthesise a nucleobase for nucleosides Va and Vb, we first obtained

• dichlorophosphane 9 from commercially available PCl3 and ethyl vinyl ether using a previously published procedure [68]. Compound 9 reacted with 1 equiv of benzyl alcohol in absolute Et2O and pyridine at −78 °C, followed by quenching of the reaction mixture with H2O. This procedure provided phosphinate 10 in more

Substrate specificity of a ketosynthase domain involved in bacillaene biosynthesis

• Zhiyong Yin and
• Jeroen S. Dickschat

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2024, 20, 734–740, doi:10.3762/bjoc.20.67

• benzyl alcohol to obtain the unlabelled ester 5 with a quantitative yield over two steps. After having established this method, (5-13C)glutamic acid (3) was converted analogously into (1-13C)-5, unfortunately with a little lower, but still very good yield of 83%. By employing Yamaguchi conditions, the

Entry to new spiroheterocycles via tandem Rh(II)-catalyzed O–H insertion/base-promoted cyclization involving diazoarylidene succinimides

• Alexander Yanovich,
• Anastasia Vepreva,
• Ksenia Malkova,
• Grigory Kantin and
• Dmitry Dar’in

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2024, 20, 561–569, doi:10.3762/bjoc.20.48

• of compound 4b has been confirmed by single crystal X-ray data. The next step was to investigate the possibility of obtaining six-membered oxygen-containing spiroheterocycles by interaction of DAS 1 with 2-(bromomethyl)benzyl alcohol (15) (Scheme 6). The synthesis was carried out under the conditions

• summarized in Scheme 8). The first pathway is realized in the formation of five-membered (in the case of 3-bromopropanol) and six-membered (in the case of 2-(bromomethyl)benzyl alcohol) cycles – the cyclization of the anion is faster than its reverse protonation. The same applies to substrates with activated

• -(bromomethyl)benzyl alcohol. Examples where a target spirocyclic product was not observed. Plausible mechanism of the transformations studied. Supporting Information Deposition numbers CCDC 2295111 (for 2a), 2308315 (for 3b), and 2305370 (for 4b) contain the supplementary crystallographic data for this paper

Non-noble metal-catalyzed cross-dehydrogenation coupling (CDC) involving ether α-C(sp³)–H to construct C–C bonds

• Hui Yu and
• Feng Xu

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2023, 19, 1259–1288, doi:10.3762/bjoc.19.94

• oxidative alkylation of cyclic benzyl ethers with malonates or ketones. Oxygen is used as a terminal oxidant at atmospheric pressure. The key intermediate of this oxidative coupling reaction is benzyl alcohol intermediate C (Scheme 4) [52]. The generation of N–O radicals from NHPI in the presence of oxygen

Honeycomb reactor: a promising device for streamlining aerobic oxidation under continuous-flow conditions

• Masahiro Hosoya,
• Yusuke Saito and
• Yousuke Horiuchi

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2023, 19, 752–763, doi:10.3762/bjoc.19.55

• using the standard tube reactor and the honeycomb reactor (Scheme 4 and Table 5). With benzyl alcohol and benzyl alcohols bearing various substituents such as OMe, Me, Br, CF3 and COOMe at the 4-position and OMe at the 2- or 3-position, the reaction was uniformly accelerated using the honeycomb reactor

Nucleophile-induced ring contraction in pyrrolo[2,1-c][1,4]benzothiazines: access to pyrrolo[2,1-b][1,3]benzothiazoles

• Ekaterina A. Lystsova,
• Maksim V. Dmitriev,
• Andrey N. Maslivets and
• Ekaterina E. Khramtsova

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2023, 19, 646–657, doi:10.3762/bjoc.19.46

• , benzylamine, and arylamines 11, while alkylamines are unsuitable for it. Notable, the use of bulky nucleophiles (tert-butyl alcohol (16a), benzyl alcohol (16b), benzhydrol (16c), 2-aminobenzothiazole (16d), HCl) makes it possible to obtain pyrrolobenzothiazoles 17 from compounds 1, but their formation

Mechanochemical solid state synthesis of copper(I)/NHC complexes with K₃PO₄

• Ina Remy-Speckmann,
• Birte M. Zimmermann,
• Mahadeb Gorai,
• Martin Lerch and
• Johannes F. Teichert

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2023, 19, 440–447, doi:10.3762/bjoc.19.34

• benzoate (8) lower overall conversion to benzyl alcohol (9) and lower yield was found with 5bm (65% conv. and 53% yield with 5bm, in comparison to 100% conv. and 80% yield with 5ls; Scheme 3a). We hypothesize that the higher amount of CH2Cl2 as part of the prepared complex, which is not a suitable solvent

Combretastatins D series and analogues: from isolation, synthetic challenges and biological activities

• Jorge de Lima Neto and
• Paulo Henrique Menezes

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2023, 19, 399–427, doi:10.3762/bjoc.19.31

• (129) followed by the reduction [61] of the aldehyde gave the corresponding benzyl alcohol 131 in 76% yield. Deacetylation in the presence of hydrazine [62] followed by intramolecular thioetherification led to the macrocycle 133. Finally, the oxidation of the obtained thioether to the corresponding

• to both, cleavage of the Piv group and reduction of the aldehyde yielding the diol 147. Selective oxidation [67] of the benzyl alcohol with MnO2 gave the compound 148, which was esterified with S-acetylthioacetic acid (129) and reduced to the benzyl alcohol 150. Deacetylation followed by

Inline purification in continuous flow synthesis – opportunities and challenges

• Jorge García-Lacuna and
• Marcus Baumann

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2022, 18, 1720–1740, doi:10.3762/bjoc.18.182

• group where an immobilized lipase (e.g., CALB) facilitated the derivatization of high-boiling benzyl alcohol in scaled Curtius rearrangement reactions. Ultimately, this approach negated the use of column chromatography in favor of a simple trituration process to isolate pure carbamate products [106

A new route for the synthesis of 1-deazaguanine and 1-deazahypoxanthine

• Raphael Bereiter,
• Marco Oberlechner and
• Ronald Micura

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2022, 18, 1617–1624, doi:10.3762/bjoc.18.172

• be easily prepared from its commercially available 6-chloro derivative [16]. To enable C–O coupling with benzyl alcohol, protection of the N9 with a tetrahydropyranyl group was necessary due to limited solubility of the aryl iodide. Therefore, 6-iodo-1-deazapurine was treated with tosylic acid and

• 3,4-dihydropyran in dimethylformamide to obtain the corresponding tetrahydropyranyl-protected amine 17. Subsequently, a copper-catalyzed C–O bond formation at C6 using benzyl alcohol in the presence of caesium carbonate, copper(I) iodide, and 1,10-phenanthroline furnished benzyl ether 18 in excellent

• -(tetrahydro-2H-pyran-2-yl)-1-deazapurine (18) Compound 17 (1.72 g, 5.23 mmol), copper(I) iodide (CuI, 99.52 mg, 0.52 mmol), 1,10-phenanthroline (188.35 mg, 1.05 mmol), caesium carbonate (Cs2CO3, 2.38 g, 7.32 mmol) and benzyl alcohol (BnOH, 1.13 g, 1.07 mL, 10.45 mmol) were suspended in 2.62 mL toluene (0.5 mL

Cyclodextrin-based Schiff base pro-fragrances: Synthesis and release studies

• Attila Palágyi,
• Jindřich Jindřich,
• Juraj Dian and
• Sophie Fourmentin

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2022, 18, 1346–1354, doi:10.3762/bjoc.18.140

• Cannizaro’s reaction. At pH 12.80, the benzaldehyde was fully converted to benzyl alcohol and benzoic acid after 5 days. Static headspace analysis We first determined the Henry law constants and the formation constants with β-CD of three selected aldehydes (Table 1). As can be seen from Table 1, the studied

Electrochemical formal homocoupling of sec-alcohols

• Kosuke Yamamoto,
• Kazuhisa Arita,
• Masashi Shiota,
• Masami Kuriyama and
• Osamu Onomura

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2022, 18, 1062–1069, doi:10.3762/bjoc.18.108

• anode-free electrochemical protocol for the synthesis of pinacol-type vic-1,2-diols from sec-alcohols, namely benzyl alcohol derivatives and ethyl lactate. The corresponding vic-1,2-diols are obtained in moderate to good yields, and good to high levels of stereoselectivity are observed for sec-benzyl

• ]. Kim et al. reported the formation of vic-1,2-diols in the sacrificial anode-free electrocarboxylation of 1-phenylethanol and benzyl alcohol which involves tetramethylpiperidine-1-oxyl-mediated alcohol oxidation as an anodic event [46]. However, vic-1,2-diols were obtained only as minor products and

• alcohol derivatives. The present transformations smoothly proceed in a simple undivided cell under constant current conditions without the use of external chemical oxidants/reductants, and transition-metal catalysts. Keywords: alcohols; dimerization; electrooxidation; electroreduction; paired

Preparation of mono-substituted malonic acid half oxyesters (SMAHOs)

• Tania Xavier,
• Sylvie Condon,
• Christophe Pichon,
• Erwan Le Gall and
• Marc Presset

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2021, 17, 2085–2094, doi:10.3762/bjoc.17.135

• (Scheme 4). These standard reactions were easy and delivered the expected products 9 in good to excellent yields. We then performed a quick optimization study of the reaction between 2-methylmalonic acid (9a) and benzyl alcohol (8d) (Table 4). Starting from classical Steglich's conditions (1.0 equiv of

Towards new NIR dyes for free radical photopolymerization processes

• Haifaa Mokbel,
• Guillaume Noirbent,
• Didier Gigmes,
• Frédéric Dumur and
• Jacques Lalevée

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2021, 17, 2067–2076, doi:10.3762/bjoc.17.133

• and the tertiary aromatic amines 3-(dimethylamino)benzyl alcohol (DABA) and N-phenylglycine (NPG), respectively, for the polymerization of a benchmark monomer (PETIA, Scheme 2). The polymerization profiles were recorded by real-time Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR, the procedure is

Cerium-photocatalyzed aerobic oxidation of benzylic alcohols to aldehydes and ketones

• Girish Suresh Yedase,
• Sumit Kumar,
• Jessica Stahl,
• Burkhard König and
• Veera Reddy Yatham

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2021, 17, 1727–1732, doi:10.3762/bjoc.17.121

• the corresponding halo-substituted benzaldehydes 2a–d in good yields. The oxidation of simple benzyl alcohol (1e) under our reaction conditions gave benzaldehyde (2e) in 55% yield. A variety of electron-donating para-substituted benzyl alcohols (1f–h) gave lower isolated yields of the corresponding

• -dichlorobenzaldehyde (2w) in 70% yield. The sulfur-containing compounds 4-(phenylthio)benzyl alcohol (1r) and the heterocyclic compound thiophene-2-ylmethanol (1x) gave the corresponding aldehydes 2r and 2x in 61 and 80% yield, respectively. Finally, 2-naphthylmethanol (1y) was subjected to the reaction conditions and

• ][67][68][69]. Under aerobic conditions the catalytic CeIII(OBn)Ln species I (in situ derived by the reaction of CeCl3 (CeIIILn) with the substrate benzyl alcohol, BnOH) could be oxidized to LnCeIV–OBn complex II [67][68][69]. During this process O2 is converted into a superoxide radical anion O2

A comprehensive review of flow chemistry techniques tailored to the flavours and fragrances industries

• Guido Gambacorta,
• James S. Sharley and
• Ian R. Baxendale

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2021, 17, 1181–1312, doi:10.3762/bjoc.17.90

• % from benzyl alcohol (16), alongside 50% of the trifluoroacetate 18. Carrying out the same process via a flow-based protocol allowed for the formation of benzaldehyde (17) in 91% yield with only 8% of the accompanying side product 18 [88]. Similarly, a stereoselective alkylation of an Evans’ type