#30 I think you are right that the new Cu-free click reactions have had a larger impact because of all the Cu-catalyzed click hype, but the Cu-free has been around since the 50's or whenever Huisgen was doing his thing.

#27: did the Cu-free click reactions get discovered before or because of the copper toxicity issues?

The click concept is helpful (even if rather oversold) - one ought to look for a bottle-stable high-energy functional groups and see if they can be connected together in a way that is orthogonal to everything else. I also thought that Sharpless was nuts when he started making triazoles but I like the idea now.

@ ex-pfizerite I'm with processchemist on this one. PTCs are used all over the place on a giant scale. Just because it may rarely come up in med chem labs... @ Brendan Thank you! I've always wondered what precisely we need all those triazoles for... And just to mix it up a little, Ruthenium metathesis catalysts are totally overrated.

Molecules with Silly or Unusual Names by May Paul http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/sillymolecules/sillymols.htm

agree with #21. watch the AZ cmpd...will take over the 8 billion currently enjoyed by plavix... you heard it here first!

As a number of the posters have already pointed out Merck have just aquired a small molecule research site in the UK with space to expand, therefore don't see this being another small molecule research site. Clark has mentioned that Merck has the money and apetite for another (smaller) aquisition. Could it be another new technology or even stem cell related like Pfizer?

It may interest you to know, Mr. Lowe, that not only this particular article but your entire "Things I won't work with" list has made the cut for my own personal Internet Archive. Now to get my hands on that book...

As I suspected: no one can name a good book for patent issues

Seriously, does make you wonder about the Merck management. A competent, experience, well-equipped, established and successful research set up which probably required just a simple change of leadership (new site head) and direction was closed for unclear reasons. A couple of years later they close two other successful 'biotech size' sites and the next year they are thinking of starting from scratch in the UK apparently on a new site with new staff etc. You just couldn't make this up!! Still, Mercks brain drain has been to the benefit of many other companies.

Terlings Park has fallen into complete neglect, roofs leaking, infrastructure disintegrating - though Merck still own it, having failed to find a buyer. One wonders whether this would have made a difference in the finances when they were deciding whether to close the site in 2006. Last I heard, they were going to sell the metalwork for scrap and sell off the land.

Click chemistry. It was supposed to the the ultimate bio-orthogonal reaction and then...oh right..copper kills cells. Nothing like riding on the coat tails of a Nobel Prize!

yeah i think the main problem is that,, is that low-tax areas can't fund lots of things that make people want to live in them, with the particular problem of education.

Anything than requires Schlenk ware or a dry box.

@ex-pfizerite TBAB is one of the most used reagents both in the lab and on the pilot plant, where I work.

Iron for cross-coupling reactions. I will second the Fu Chiral DMAPs as totally useless (I'd rather use an enzyme to de-acylate). Do they still separate the catalyst enantiomers with chiral HPLC? Why not just separate your substrate enantiomers with chiral HPLC? Some of the organocatalysts are getting a little ridiculous (more steps to make them than most synthetic sequences attempted in industry). Gold catalysts for the regioselective rearrangement of grease.

Atom economy and green chemistry as pompously vacuous catch phrases Alpine-borane reagents, Verkade and P4 phosphazene superbase, LS-Selectride, the planary-chiral DMAP from Greg Fu are the famous reagents that no-one uses Kempf's triacid and calixarenes as oversold building blocks in supramolecular chemistry Safety-catch linkers and photocleavable linkers in solid phase synthesis as something that was tried by many but never caught on

beentheredonethat (#1) did you forget to add (g) copy all of the bad ideas from Pfizer?

SiGNa reagents?

more books of inetrest to medicinal chemists! A Pharmacology Primer: Theory, Application and Methods by Terry Kenakin Molecular Biology in Medicinal Chemistry (Methods and Principles in Medicinal Chemistry) by Theodor Dingermann Fundamentals of Antimicrobial Pharmacokinetic​s and Pharmacodynamic​s by Alexander Vinks Human Drug Metabolism: An Introduction by Michael D. Coleman Fluorine in Medicinal Chemistry and Chemical Biology by Iwao Ojima Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry of Fluorine by Jean-Pierre Bégué Antitargets: Prediction and Prevention of Drug Side Effects (Methods and Principles in Medicinal Chemistry) by Roy J. Vaz Drug Bioavailability​: Estimation of Solubility, Permeability, Absorption and Bioavailability​ (Methods and Principles in Medicinal Chemistry) by Han van de Waterbeemd Protein-Ligand Interactions: From Molecular Recognition to Drug Design (Methods and Principles in Medicinal Chemistry) by Hans-Joachim Böhm Analogue-based Drug Discovery by IUPAC Fragment-based Approaches in Drug Discovery (Methods and Principles in Medicinal Chemistry) by Wolfgang Jahnke Fragment-Based Drug Discovery: A Practical Approach by Edward Zartler Organic Synthesis with Enzymes in Non-Aqueous Media by Giacomo Carrea A Short History of the Drug Receptor Concept (Science, Technology and Medicine in Modern History) by Andreas-Holger Maehle Managing Scientists: Leadership Strategies in Scientific Research by Alice M. Sapienza

Phase transfer catalysts

37? ... As if I didn't feel as a waste of space already. I saw the notice on P212121 and the thank you from his family, but I' afraid I didn't know of him before. Nor of PyMol. It isn't much, but he indeed has left a monument, that will lend him some semblance of immortality.

I am interested in the comment that statins can mimic AD. Is there general agreement on this? If my wife is taking a statin (simvastatin), should she stop?

+1 for Montmorillonite we've used it quite a bit as an adsorbent to get rid of reaction byproducts and catalyst residues. Great stuff if you have to do stuff on large (50g) scale as the only workup afterwards is to filter the stuff off.

Maybe more categorized as techniques, rather than reagents, but I would nominate both "Prep GC" and "Spinning band" column distillations although I know actually can be useful in certain situations but the effort verses output would regulate to extreme choices of last resort IMO. A sometimes "solvent" I likewise know can be of particular value but I found more trouble than its worth is CS2. #16 anon are you suggesting syn chemist smell bad?