Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) continues to be a major health threat worldwide, and the development of Mtb vaccines could play a pivotal role in the prevention and control of this devastating epidemic. Th17-mediated immunity has been implicated in disease protection correlates of immune protection against Mtb. Currently, there are no approved adjuvants capable of driving a Th17 response in a vaccine setting. Recent clinical trial results using trehalose dibehenate have demonstrated a formulation-dependant proof of concept adjuvant system CAF01 capable of inducing long-lived protection. We have discovered a new class of Th17-inducing vaccine adjuvants based on the natural product Brartemicin. We synthesized and evaluated the capacity of a library of aryl trehalose derivatives to drive immunostimulatory reresponses and evaluated the structure–activity relationships in terms of the ability to engage the Mincle receptor and induce production of innate cytokines from human and murine cells. We elaborated on the structure–activity relationship of the new scaffold and demonstrated the ability of the lead entity to induce a pro-Th17 cytokine profile from primary human peripheral blood mononuclear cells and demonstrated efficacy in generating antibodies in combination with tuberculosis antigen M72 in a mouse model.

The transition metal catalyzed direct site‐selective carbon –hydrogen functionalization is ubiquitous in organic synthesis and has reached an impressive level of sophistication and efficiency emerging as a powerful synthetic strategy for C–C bond and C–X bond formation to access various useful arylated organic molecules. For the past two decades, directing group strategy has been used for selective activation and functionalization of certain inert C–H bonds. Despite the enormous development in this field, still, the majority of systems require two redundant steps, i. e. installation and removal of DGs. To overcome these limitations, recently, traceless and multitasking groups were invented as a partial solution to DG release however installation still remains unsolved. Ideally, use of the catalytic directing group, which can be reversibly linked to the substrate and can serve as an efficient directing role would circumvent this problem and is considered as one of the most efficient and powerful strategies for the non‐activated C–H functionalization (C(sp2)–H or C(sp3)–H). In this review, we describe the enormous advances in this field for direct selective C–H functionalization without involving additional steps, i. e. installation and removal of directing groups and also discuss less explored but significant non‐covalent interactions such as hydrogen bonding or ion pairing, which helps to control the selectivity of a substrate in a catalytic organic reaction.

Treatment of (ortho-trimethysilyl)aryl phenylsulfonates with a soluble fluoride source initiates a Truce-Smiles rearrangement leading to the formation of functionalized bi-aryls. This new carbon-carbon bond-forming reaction proceeds without recourse to transition metal catalysis, under mild reaction conditions and with good functional group compatibility.

A ruthenium-catalyzed functionalization of benzaldehyde substrate with organic azides promoted by various transient directing groups has been developed. In this approach, C–H amination is achieved via a transient aldimine intermediate in good to excellent yields.