Congratulations to the SynOpen, SYNTHESIS, and SYNLETT Best Paper Award Winners 2023!

Fabio Pesciaioli for SynOpen, Takaaki Sato for SYNTHESIS, and Santanu Mukherjee for SYNLETT, together with their co-authors, are the recipients of the 2023 Best Paper Awards.

We are thrilled to announce the winner of the inaugural SynOpen Best Paper Award! After a selection process by the Editorial Boards, we are proud to recognize Fabio Pesciaioli and colleagues at University of L'Aquila, Italy, for their outstanding article Organocatalytic Synthesis of γ-Amino Acid Precursors via Masked Acetaldehyde under Micellar Catalysis.

A huge congratulations to all six winners from the SynOpen Editors and the Thieme Chemistry editorial team!

A collaborative team from Keio University and Toyama Prefectural University (Japan) led by Takaaki Sato have been awarded the SYNTHESIS Best Paper Award 2023 for their paper Total Synthesis and Anti-inflammatory Activity of Stemoamide-Type Alkaloids Including Totally Substituted Butenolides and Pyrroles.

In announcing the selection, Mark Lautens, Editor-in-Chief of SYNTHESIS, wrote: “Professor Sato and team described a detailed synthetic study of the stemoamide class of heterocycles including tricyclic, tetracyclic and pentacyclic frameworks. The paper includes a stereodivergent strategy in the creation of a fully substituted butenolide. A comprehensive investigation that outlines several optimization reactions, careful structure elucidation and discussion, and anti-inflammatory assays, are highlights on this exciting study.”

For more background information, please read the SYNFORM highlight.

The SYNLETT Best Paper Award 2023 is being awarded to Santanu Mukherjee and Sayan Ray at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (India) for their article Catalytic Enantioselective Desymmetrization of meso-Cyclopropane-Fused Cyclohexene-1,4-diones by a Formal C(sp²)–H Alkylation, which was published in the Cluster on Chemical Synthesis and Catalysis in India (Part I and Part II).

In revealing the selection, Benjamin List, former Editor-in-Chief of SYNLETT, stated: “Mukherjee and his team describe an extremely elegant and highly enantioselective approach to desymmetrize bicyclo[4.1.0]heptenes. Their organocatalytic reaction features the use of nitroalkanes as source of alkyl groups in a C(sp²)–H alkylation. The method is applied in the first enantioselective synthesis of 3-carene-2,5-dione.”