Small molecule functionalisation

Introduction of fluorinated groups into drug and pesticides candidates is known to be a powerful strategy how to optimize their properties and to boost their efficacy. A judicious choice of a suitable fluorinated moiety incorporated in the molecule can turn into an efficient tool to fine tune the acidobasic behaviour, lipophilicity, impart a dipole moment, impose conformational locks, block an undesirable metabolism or (photo)oxidative degradation and create the sought-after weak interactions of C-F bond with proteins.

It is therefore no surprise that over the last 25 years, the medicinal chemistry and agrochemistry fields witnessed a massive growth of using the fluorinated molecules.

We offer a palette of fluoroalkylation tools that can be used to generate a plethora of fluorinated motifs in chemical structures of interest.

Although the prevalent majority of fluorinated groups encountered in modern drugs and pesticides are single fluorine, trifluoromethyl and difluoromethyl groups, we provide also reagents and building blocks that enable to install less common, but potentially very attractive functionalities, for instance a substituted tetrafluoroethylene moiety or fluoroalkylated triazoles.

Our key expertise is the chemistry of hypervalent iodine-fluoroalkyl reagents, especially the so called Togni reagents.

We leveraged the extremely rich trifluoromethylation chemistry developed with the first generation of trifluoromethyl Togni reagents and took them to a new level using our patented second generation of Togni reagents transferring a broad variety of substituted RCF₂CF₂- units.

With the armamentarium of these second generation Togni reagents in hand, chemists can now easily perform late stage diversification of their lead small molecule candidates with a number of previously inaccessible fluoroalkylated motifs, thus opening new possibilities for innovation in chemical space.