Photocatalytic Arylations with Diazonium Salts in Aqueous and Biorelevant Media

Abstract

Performing designed, abiotic chemical transformations in live environments represents a powerful approach to interrogate and manipulate biology, and to uncover new types of biomedical tools. Despite significant advances in the area, the list of bio-orthogonal reactions so far available is still very short, and mainly restricted to the use of strained reactants, or metal-promoted processes. En route to further expanding the repertoire of biocompatible reactions, we demonstrate here that aryldiazonium salts, well-established as radical precursors, can react with unsaturated systems in biologically relevant media under photocatalytic conditions, to give either addition or cycloaddition products, depending on the reactants.