Congratulations to the SYNTHESIS and SYNLETT Best Paper Award Winners 2022!

Christoph Schneider for SYNTHESIS and Todd K. Hyster for SYNLETT, together with their co-authors, are the recipients of the 2022 Best Paper Awards.

It is our great pleasure to announce that the SYNTHESIS Best Paper Award 2022 is being awarded to Christoph Schneider and co-workers at Universität Leipzig (Germany) for their paper Asymmetric Synthesis of Fused Tetrahydroquinolines via Intramolecular Aza-Diels–Alder Reaction of ortho-Quinone Methide Imines, which was included in the Special Topic ‘Cycloadditions – Established and Novel Trends – in Celebration of the 70^th Anniversary of the Nobel Prize Awarded to Otto Diels and Kurt Alder’. In revealing this year’s winning paper, Mark Lautens, Editor-in-Chief of SYNTHESIS, said: “The Schneider lab has reported on intramolecular aza-Diels–Alder reactions of ortho-quinone methide imines, giving access to biologically relevant tetrahydroquinolines. Key to their success was the use of chiral BINOL phosphoric amides as Brønsted acids. This comprehensive study presents successes and limitations, as well as proposes possible transition states to explain the results. The continuing importance of the Diels–Alder reaction, and its many variants, remains a topic of intense interest 70 years after the award of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Diels and Alder.

We are delighted to announce that the SYNLETT Best Paper Award 2022 is being awarded to Todd K. Hyster and co-workers at Cornell University (USA) for their article A Photoenzyme for Challenging Lactam Radical Cyclizations, which was published as part of the Cluster ‘Organic Photoredox Catalysis in Synthesis – Honoring Prof. Shunichi Fukuzumi’s 70^th Birthday’. The related chemistry was also presented by Todd Hyster and Bryce Nicholls in the Thieme WebCheminar ‘Organic Photoredox Catalysis in Synthesis – presented by SYNLETT’. In disclosing the selection, Benjamin List, Editor-in-Chief of SYNLETT, stated: “Controlling the selectivity of radical reactions is a grand challenge in chemical synthesis and catalysis. By using engineered enzymes that pre-organize radical substrates in a confined active site to selectively engage in chemical reactions, Todd Hyster and his team provide a beautiful and general solution to this longstanding problem. In the recognized SYNLETT paper, they courageously underline the power of their photoenzymatic approach by comparing it with traditional tin hydride and more modern methods such as iron hydride and photoredox catalysis, clearly establishing the superiority of radical biocatalysis in reductive radical cyclizations.”