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Updated: Oct 3, 2025

Chemoselective Modification of Viral Surfaces via Bioorthogonal Click Chemistry
Published on: August 19, 2012
Sulfonium Triggered Alkyne-Azide Click Cycloaddition
Zhanfeng Hou1,2, Yuena Wang1, Chuan Wan1
1State Key Laboratory of Chemical Oncogenomics, School of Chemical Biology and Biotechnology, Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School, Shenzhen 518055, China.
Abstract:
Herein, we report the first facile Cu-free click reaction between alkynyl sulfonium and azide at ambient temperatures in aqueous media. DFT computations indicate that the sulfonium group is the key factor to gaining reactivity by stabilizing LUMO+1 and influencing the charge distribution of the triple bond. Sulfonium alkynes can be easily synthesized and scaled up, and most of them are biocompatible. We prepared candidate molecules and tested their use in multiple proof-of-concept biological applications.
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