Sigma-Aldrich Signs Boronic Acid Deal

Sigma-Aldrich has signed a licensing agreement with the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, allowing it to offer research quantities of boronic acid surrogates for use in Suzuki-Miyaura coupling. The molecules are based on technology discovered by professor Martin D. Burke and coworkers and use the low-cost ligand N-methyliminodiacetic acid (MIDA). According to Sigma, the MIDA-ligated boronic acid building blocks can be employed to construct families of molecules through a single cross-coupling reaction in an iterative process. The company sees the technology aiding drug discovery.