Department of
Chemistry

Dr. Gnanaprakasam Boopathy was born (1979) and raised in Chennai, India. He earned his BS (1999) and MS (2001) in chemistry from the University of Madras. Then, he obtained his PhD (2008) on the topic of “Synthetic methods towards terpenoids, steroids and macrocycles” from Bhavnagar University. Subsequently, he has completed a couple of Post-Doctoral program from Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel (September 2008-August 2011) under Professor David Milstein and AVH fellow from Gottingen University, Germany (September 2012- February 2014) under Professor Lutz. F Tietze. Prior to AVH post-doctoral fellowship, he joined as a scientist at ICES-ASTAR, Singapore (December 2012-July 2013). After Post-Doctoral program, he began his independent career as an Associate professor at SRM Research Institute (March 2014-June 2014). In late 2014, he moved to IISER Pune in the department of chemistry where he currently holds the rank of Associate Professor. The Gnanaprakasam group’s research interests include development of metal catalyzed sustainable/green synthetic methods for the natural products, continuous flow synthetic methodology for bioactive molecules and Fluorinated organic scaffold.

Research

Continuous-Flow Organic Synthesis, Homogeneous Catalysis and Natural Product Synthesis

Continuous-Flow Organic Synthesis: Considering the potential application of flow chemistry in the pharmaceutical industry and fine chemicals synthesis, basic research is desirable in implementing the batch processes into flow chemistry for challenging organic transformations and that of emerging areas today. We develops new process using continuous-flow for the synthesis of drugs, natural products and API.

Peroxidation and Rearrangement Reactions: Peroxides are one of the most widely useful intermediates in organic synthesis and present in many natural products and pharmaceutical drugs. The weak oxygen−oxygen bonds and low bond energy of this peroxide make them as reactive intermediate in many chemical transformations. As a result of this unique bond properties, organic peroxide delivers numerous fundamental oxidation chemistry and rearrangement reactions like Baeyer−Villiger, Criegee, Hock, Kornblum−DeLaMare, Smith, etc. Certainly, organic peroxides are used in multiple applications such as oxidation reagent, radical initiator and energetic materials, yet application of these peroxide in C−C and C−X bond formation towards the chemical synthesis are limited. Hence, our group develops new synthetic methods for the peroxidation towards the natural products and drugs. Further, these peroxide explores for the skeletal rearrangement reaction using metal-catalyst toward the synthesis of various heterocyclic compounds of biological interest.

Natural Products Synthesis: The main research focus of our group is to develop efficient and novel sustainable route to synthesize natural products of challenging structures with intriguing biological activities. Towards these, new catalytic reactions for stereoselective domino reactions, phenolic oxidation and dehydrogenate coupling reactions (Acceptorless dehydrogenation) will be discovered using cooperative metal catalyst. Further, these reactions can be used as the key reactions that eventually form stereoselective C-C, C-N and C-O bond formation and thereby various key building blocks can be synthesized by avoiding hazardous stoichiometry reagents and activators.

Fluorination Methods: Our research focus is also directed to study the catalytic fluorination of various activated/non-activated aromatic and non-aromatic compounds using cooperative metal complex catalyst, non-hazardous and inexpensive fluorinating agents.

Selected Publications

Jamdade, A. B.; Sutar, D. V.; Bisht, G. S.; Gnanaprakasam, B. Ru-MACHO Catalyzed Direct Inter/Intramolecular Macrocyclization of Alcohols and Ketones. Org. Lett, 2021, Accepted.

Shaikh, M. A.; Ubale, A. S.; Gnanaprakasam, B. Indium Catalyzed Sequential Regioselective Remote C-H Indolylation and Rearrangement Reaction of Peroxyoxindole. Adv. Synth. Catal., 2021, Accepted.

Mohanta, N.; Nair, K.; Sutar, D. V.; Gnanaprakasam, B. A continuous-flow approach for the multi-gram scale synthesis of C2-alkyl- or β-amino functionalized 1,3-dicarbonyl derivatives and ondansetron drug using 1,3-dicarbonyls, React. Chem. Eng., 2020, 5, 1501-1508.

Agalave, S. G.; Chaudhari, M. B.; Bisht, G. S.; Gnanaprakasam, B. Additive free Fe-catalyzed conversion of nitro to aldehyde under continuous flow module, ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng., 2018, 6, 12845–12854.

Chaudhari, M. B.; Moorthy, S.; Patil, S.; Bisht, G. S.; Mohamed, H.; Basu, S.; Gnanaprakasam, B. Iron-catalyzed batch/continuous flow C-H functionalization module for the synthesis of anticancer peroxides, J. Org. Chem., 2018, 83, 1358-1368.