Chemistry with Potential

On the evening of Thursday 12 October RSC Belgium welcomed Prof. Kevin Lam from The University of Greenwich back to Belgium to give a talk entitled: ‘Electrifying the Pharmaceutical Industry without the BANG! When Your Chemistry has got Potential’. Professor Lam was awarded his PhD at the Universite Catholique de Louvain under the supervision of our old friend Istvan Marko and explored the use of electrochemistry and photochemistry as green alternatives to activate organic molecules. This work resulted in the development of a new radical-based deoxygenation reaction (the Lam-Marko reaction).

Synthetic organic electrochemistry has its roots in the classic work of Faraday and Kolbe on the electrolysis of aliphatic carboxylic acids. Although numerous transformations have been developed since then, many of which have been successfully applied in various industrial processes, the potential of preparative organic electrochemistry remains underestimated. However, the growing impetus to find greener and more cost-effective alternatives to traditional synthetic methods has recently led to the development of novel electrosynthetic methods.

In his talk Kevin presented new, safe, green, affordable and efficient ways to generate highly reactive organic intermediates such as iso(thio)cyanates, isocyanides, orthoesters or even diazo compounds. He also discussed the scale-up of these processes using flow electrosynthesis to demonstrate their real-world application in the pharmaceutical industry by reviewing case studies carried out with pharma giants including GSK, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.

The venue for this event was the Brel Theatre at the British School of Brussels (BSB) in Tervuren.

Youtube video

Kevin's talk was recorded and can be found on our dedicated Youtube channel or as an embedded video below. Enjoy!