Enantioselective Catalysis with Transition Metal Complexes

Abstract

Metabolism in man, animal and plant uses optically active compounds, such as L amino acids, D sugars etc., and not racemic mixtures. As a consequence, biology should be approached with optically pure compounds of the correct configuration and not with racemic mixtures. This refers to additives to human food, supplementation of animal food, drugs and agrochemicals, an impressive list of applications which demonstrates the importance of optically active compounds. Therefore, the synthesis of optically active compounds is a challenging problem for the chemical and pharmaceutical industry.