Cascade Processes Merging Chemical and Enzyme Catalysis

Cascade processes are an attractive strategy to rapidly build molecular complexity and circumvent the need to isolate reaction intermediates, providing higher efficiencies into synthetic routes with lower environmental toll. We have recently developed a new method to synthesise chiral 1,4-nitro alcohols by sequentially combining three transformations in the same reaction vessel via asymmetric C-C bond formation using a chiral thiourea catalyst and a bioreduction process as key steps.