Research Projects

Late-stage functionalization of the pharmaceutical motifs by forming carbon-carbon (C-C), carbon-oxygen (C-O), and carbon-nitrogen (C-N) bonds are considered as one of the important chemical transformations to alter the efficacy of the drug. In this regard, for the quest of new chemical entity (NCE), the introduction of photo-catalysis has changed our perspective and it has become an indispensable tool to synthesize natural products and versatile organic building blocks. However, scalable, regioselective photochemical functionalization of the unactivated bond in quick succession is itself a challenging task. Though such limitations may be overcome through electro-catalysis, but often it demands precious electrodes, and sometimes it requires precaution to protect the final product from degradation by over-oxidation. However, merging photo-catalysis with electro-catalysis to promote organic transformations in economical manner could be possible. In addition to this, the introduction of flow-catalysis in combination with photo and electrocatalysis can be utilized for tackling scale-up problems and minimizing the timescale challenges of photochemistry and simultaneously diminish the possibility of degradation in electrochemistry for industrial processes. Based on these facts, we have realized that the merging of flow-photochemistry (FPC) with electrochemistry (EC) could open up way to the access of wide range of pharmaceutical compounds and natural products to provide a new dimension in the synthetic organic chemistry community. In current scientific scenario, though flow-photoredox catalysis (FPC) and electrocatalysis (EC) are often mentioned alongside each other for the synthesis of organic molecules but, it can be anticipated that the combination of FPC and EC could lead to a constructive merger filling each other’s flaws by their respective advantages. So far, this transformation is limited. Hence, the current proposal aims to fill the gap in today’s scenario by developing a flow-photo-electrocatalysis (FPEC) strategy which will generate reactive intermediates via FPC and successively react with other substrate in a regioselective manner via EC to construct the desired C-X (X= C, O, N) bonds. Therefore, this project will offer highly sophisticated yet operationally simple and cost-effective methodologies for the synthesis of NCE to meet the urgent requirement of derivatization of drugs and drug intermediates in very short span of time.