Researchers from the Department of Chemistry at Wroclaw University of Science and Technology (PWr) have discovered an entirely new class of chemical reactions of exceptional importance in the chemistry of bioorganic molecules. They published their results in the prestigious “Angewandte Chemie International Edition.” 

The discovery by Mikołaj Janicki, PhD, and Rafał Szabla, PhD, quantum chemists at the Institute of Advanced Materials, described in the paper “Chalcogen bonds enable efficient photoreduction of sulfur-containing heterocycles,” opens up  significant potential for the development of new organic synthesis pathways. 

Polish scientists were the first to show that such processes can be enabled by a unique type of intermolecular interactions. These are so-called chalcogenide interactions, which can be formed between two sulfur atoms (S-S) found in two different molecules. 

The discovery was inspired by the experimental research of Prof. John Sutherland’s team at the MRC Laboratory in Cambridge, with whom the W3 researchers published a joint paper in Nature in 2020. 

 Their research project was made possible thanks to funding obtained by Dr. Janicki under a Prelude grant from the National Science Center (NCN) and by using the computational power of the Wroclaw Center for Networking and Supercomputing (WCSS). 

 “Angewandte Chemie International Edition,” in which the PWr publication appeared, is one of the most prestigious and influential chemistry journals in the world. 

Janicki M., Szabla R. K. Chalcogen bonds enable efficient photoreduction of sulfur-containing heterocycles. Angewandte Chemie (International edition). 2024, Article e202413498, pp. 1-8.