Project Summary
The proposed studies focus on the design, synthesis, and development of a range of vanadium-
based catalysts to perform carbon isotope exchange via =*CH2 (*C = 11C, 13C, and 14C) group transfer
between terminal olefins. Carbon isotope exchange is an emerging area that allows incorporating carbon-
14 isotope directly into target compounds for metabolic and pharmacokinetic studies. Furthermore, the
integration of carbon-11 into pharmaceuticals is an indispensable tool in positron emission tomography. The
innovation of the proposed work is the development of olefin metathesis catalysts based on the first-row
transition metal, vanadium, to take advantage highly polarized V=C bond. These V alkylidenes feature
enabled regioselective formation of metallacyclobutane, resulting in reversible =CH2 transfer between
terminal olefins without formation of cross-products and ethylene, which is supported by our preliminary
results and DFT studies. Therefore, V-catalyze carbon isotope exchange can serve as a new platform to
incorporate labeled carbon atoms into a wide range of pharmaceuticals and natural products without
developing new multi-step synthetic strategies. The proposed approach uses accessible labeled
iodomethane (*CH3I) as a carbon isotope source and can be applied to compounds containing various
common functional groups. The method will be expanded to alkyl-containing bioactive molecules utilizing a
tandem dehydrogenation/olefin metathesis strategy. Therefore, the first example of carbon isotope
exchange involving the methyl group will be introduced. The utility of the new concepts, catalysts, and
protocols will be emphasized through applications to the concise synthesis of isotopically labeled
pharmaceuticals and natural products.