Click Chemistry- A Story behind the Nobel minds !!

The click reaction is the name given to a particular chemical process. A framework or method for conducting chemistry is called "click chemistry." creating specifically complex chemical compounds, primarily those used in pharmaceuticals.

The "click" in "click chemistry" was intended to represent the ease and satisfaction that comes from joining items with a baggage strap connection. Whatever the components, as long as the buckle's two ends can touch, the linkage will be created. An enormous variety of endeavours in many fields, including materials science, surface science, analytical chemistry, chemical biology, and drug development, have been motivated by or supported by this compelling idea—that good chemistry can enable anyone to create significant chemical entities—including the development of new drugs. The related fields of click and bio-orthogonal chemistry have worked in concert to generate more sophisticated chemical reactions because it is fairly difficult to find techniques for the selective and dependable formation of bonds.

Chemistry of Click Reactions

A intriguing method for labelling and ligating nucleic acids is azide-alkyne cycloaddition due to the ease of synthesis and great chemical stability of triazole linkages. The need for high reaction temperatures, which typically cause DNA or RNA degradation, limits the direct application of Huisgen's click conversion to oligonucleotides. Moreover, challenging separation and purification can come from the production of two regioisomers, the 1,4- and 1,5-disubstituted triazoles, on prolonged oligonucleotides. A catalyst is added to the reaction to speed up the cycloaddition, boost reaction yield, and encourage regiospecificity in the final triazole bond. For these goals, a variety of metals and metal complexes have been utilised, including derivatives of copper, ruthenium, silver, and zinc. To avoid metal catalysis instead, "activated" alkynes have been used in the have been utilized to avoid metal catalysis in the strain promoted azide–alkyne cycloaddition (SPAAC) .

CuAAC is the pinnacle of click chemistry. Soon, it had become the preferred method for joining almost any two organic molecules. Its effectiveness and the formation of the triazole connection are just two of the many factors that contributed to its widespread use. Triazoles are relatively stable and are found in a few significant medications, including the well-known antifungal medicine fluconazole. Drug development was greatly accelerated by the CuAAC reaction, which also made it possible to conduct a wide range of research which was not possible earlier.

References:

1. Farrer NJ, Griffith DM. Exploiting azide–alkyne click chemistry in the synthesis, tracking and targeting of platinum anticancer complexes. Current Opinion in Chemical Biology. 2020 Apr 1;55:59-68.

2. Fantoni NZ, El-Sagheer AH, Brown T. A hitchhiker’s guide to click-chemistry with nucleic acids. Chemical Reviews. 2021 Jan 14;121(12):7122-54.