‘Break it to make it’ reaction to diversify drugs structures

Hydraulic excavator machinery working on site demolition

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Carbon–carbon bond breaking reaction might make chemists rethink how they build molecules

A reaction that deconstructs rings could change the way chemists think about carbon–carbon bonds: as potential functional groups rather than inert structures. ‘I think that the next frontier is really thinking how to break carbon–carbon bonds that lie at the core of organic compounds to make value-added products,’ says Richmond Sarpong from the University of California Berkeley, US, who led the work.