Organic synthesis really needs DX?

Abstract

Chemical products such as drugs, agrochemicals, plastics and so on are composed of organic molecules. Organic synthesis is an essential tool to provide organic molecules. In particular, the development of “catalysis”, a powerful tool enabling to link molecules, is one of the central issues in the field of organic synthesis. The organic synthesis research including catalyst developments highly relies on the trial-and-error approach based on empirical knowledge of researchers. To drastically change this situation, researches for realizing “DX” have been actively investigated recently. However, it is wondering whether DX of organic synthesis really requires. In this article, a current situation and future prospect on DX of the organic synthesis/molecular catalysis field will be described.