Site‐Selective Acylations with Tailor‐Made Catalysts

The acylation of alcohols catalyzed by N,N‐dimethylamino pyridine (DMAP) is, despite its widespread use, sometimes confronted with substrate‐specific problems: For example, target compounds with multiple hydroxy groups may show insufficient selectivity for one hydroxyl, and the resulting product mixtures are hardly separable. Here we describe a concept that aims at tailor‐made catalysts for the site‐specific acylation. To this end, we introduce a catalyst library where each entry is constructed by connecting a variable and readily tuned peptide scaffold with a catalytically active unit based on DMAP. For selected examples, we demonstrate how library screening leads to the identification of optimized catalysts, and the substrates of interest can be converted with a markedly enhanced site‐selectivity compared with only DMAP. Furthermore, substrate‐optimized catalysts of this type can be used to selectively convert “their” substrate in the presence of structurally similar compounds, an important requisite for reactions with mixtures of substances.