University of Minnesota chemists pioneer new method for future drug and agrochemical discovery

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (11/20/2025) — A team of organic and computational chemists at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have created a new, modern tool to make the process of creating pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals faster, cost-effective, and energy-efficient.

The research, recently published in Nature, details a new method for creating the essential starting materials, known as precursors, used in chemical reactions. A patent is pending for this technique.

Chemists use what are called “aryne intermediates” as building blocks to make complex molecules more efficiently in areas such as pharmaceuticals and materials. Previously, researchers would have to add chemical additives to their reactions for activation, leading to significant waste. The new method eliminates these additives by using low-energy blue light, the kind found in everyday aquarium lights, as the activator.

"The tool for building molecules using an aryne intermediate hasn’t changed since 1983,” said Courtney Roberts, the senior author of the study and a University of Minnesota Department of Chemistry associate professor who holds the 3M Alumni Professorship. “We took this opportunity to break open this field so that it can be used by the entire chemistry and materials community, rather than just in niche applications."

Researchers initially planned to use heat as the activator, when one student noticed that the compounds were yellow. This indicated that the chemical absorbed light, which was a surprising discovery.

Using resources at the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, the team was able to computationally justify why the compound could absorb the light at the molecular and atom level. Combining organic and computation chemistry was critical in providing the knowledge of the hidden molecular structure formed along the way.

“These play critical roles in understanding the structure of the chemical reactions and how we have modified and improved them experimentally,” said Jan-Niklas Boyn, a University of Minnesota assistant professor of chemistry and co-author of the study.

The research started with an idea from former Department of Chemistry Ph.D. student Chris Seong, who identified a gap in existing literature. After the team came together, the research was accelerated and completed in just a year and a half.

This new method can now be applied to biological conditions, which couldn’t be done with the old model. This means not only can this be applied to small molecule drug discovery, it can be applied to more complicated processes: antibody drug conjugates or drugs with DNA-endcoded libraries. 

But this research doesn’t stop here, the team is hoping to expand.

“We’ve developed about 40 building blocks for creating drug molecules. Our hope is to continue to expand that number to provide a comprehensive set of building blocks that is accessible for researchers in different fields,” Roberts said.

In addition to Roberts, Boyn and Seong, the research team included Department of Chemistry Ph.D. students Sallu Kargbo and Felica Yu along with postdoctoral scholar Daniel Gibney.

This research was funded by the University of Minnesota for startup funding. Collaborators on this work were able to accomplish the research with the following awards: the Amgen Young Investigator Award, the BMS Unrestricted Research Grant, the Sloan Fellowship, the Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award, the McKnight Land-Grant Professorship, the 3M-Alumni Professorship, the Wayland E. Noland Excellence Fellowship and the University of Minnesota Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship.

Read the full paper entitled, “Myriad aryne derivatives from carboxylic acids,” on the Nature website.

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