Nature publishes two Wuhan University articles within just 24 hours and the latest solves a global problem

On August 29, Nature published online the latest electrosynthesis research of the team led by Professor Lei Aiwen and Professor Li Wu's team from Wuhan University's College of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences and the Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS), entitled “Electrocatalytic Reductive Deuteration of Arenes and Heteroarenes”. Dr. Faxiang Bu from the College of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences of Wuhan University and Dr. Yuqi Deng from the Institute for Advanced Studies were the co-first authors of the paper, while Professor Li Wu and Professor Lei Aiwen were the corresponding authors, and Wuhan University was the sole signatory.

Image showing the paper’s entry on Nature website

Deuterium labeling is widely used in new drug creation, mass spectrometry internal standard, chemical reaction kinetics, biotracer and other research. For example, new deuterium-labeled drugs such as deuterobenazine (Antetan), donafenib (Zepsan), and VV116 (Mindevi) have been approved and marketed. In addition, MRI deuterium metabolism imaging has received widespread attention as a newly emerging molecular metabolism imaging technique. However, the development of deuterium labeling methods is limited, and the developed methods present great challenges in introducing multiple deuterium atoms and high deuterium labeling rates. These factors contribute to the very high price of deuterium-labeled compounds. It is important to develop efficient deuterium labeling methods using inexpensive deuterium sources. Saturated (hetero)cyclic structures are widely present in pharmaceuticals and natural molecules, and the synthesis of deuterium-labeled saturated (hetero)cyclic compounds from inexpensive and readily available aromatic compounds is a cost-effective and efficient synthetic method. Until now, a universal deuterium-labeled method for the reduction of aromatic hydrocarbons has not been developed.

From left to right: Professor Lei Aiwen, Professor Deng Yuqi, Professor Bu Faxiang, Prof. Li Wu

Editor：Zhilan Hu