Amidation: Summary and Further Reading

In their survey of the reactions used by the pharmaceutical industry in the production of drug candidates, Carey et al.[1] note that not a single catalytic method was used for the synthesis of amides. There is still a pressing need for scalable catalytic methodologies for the synthesis of amides that are atom efficient and avoid the production of waste; this has encouraged research into the efficient preparation of amide bonds.

Recommended reading:

F. K. Ferdousi and A. Whiting, Green Catalytic Direct Amide Bond Formation, in Green and Sustainable Medicinal Chemistry: Methods, Tools and Strategies for the 21st Century Pharmaceutical Industry, The Royal Society of Chemistry, 2016, ch. 13, pp. 156-164.

Details on recent developments in the synthesis of amide bonds can be found in the following reviews:

E. Valeur and M. Bradley, Amide bond formation: beyond the myth of coupling reagents, Chem. Soc. Rev., 2009, 38, 606-631.
C. A. G. N. Montalbetti and V. Falque, Amide bond formation and peptide coupling, Tetrahedron, 2005, 61, 10827-10852.
V. R. Pattabiraman and J. W. Bode, Rethinking amide bond synthesis, Nature, 2011, 480, 471-479.

A specialised review of metal‑catalysed approaches to amide bond formation:

L. C. Allen and J. M. J. Williams, Metal-catalysed approaches to amide bond formation, Chem. Soc. Rev., 2011, 40, 3405-3415.

Review of catalytic amide bond formation on non-activated amines and carboxylic acids:

H. Lundberg, F. Tinnis, N. Selander and H. Adolfsson, Catalytic amide formation from non-activated carboxylic acids and amines, Chem. Soc. Rev., 2014, 43, 2714-2742.

J. S. Carey, D. Laffan, C. Thomson and M. T. Williams, Analysis of the reactions used for the preparation of drug candidate molecules, Org. Biomol. Chem., 2006, 4, 2337-2347.