This paper is the most comprehensive review of the chemical literature specializing in the area of solid-supported reagents and scavengers. The introductory text is written to provide an easily followed historical account of the invention and development of these systems through to their use in today's more complex chemical syntheses programs. The subsequent part of the review is dedicated to a tabulated and literature cross referenced handbook on all the reported reagents, their transformations and their synthetic preparation. The main benefit to the synthetic chemist and the reason for the popularity of this paper is that it provides a bench-top quick reference guide for users of these systems.

The supported reagent technology can be traced back to the early part of the last century but a true understanding of the value and utility of these systems has only been recognized in the last decade which can be seen by the rapid rise in published papers and patents. Much of the renewed interest has been driven by the need to produce more chemical entities in a faster and cleaner manner for biological screening which is certainly facilitated by these reagents. In addition the regulatory restrictions imposed on the chemical industry by increased health and safety rules and environmental pollution controls have also popularized their use due to their easy handling and simple disposal when the use of recycling is not possible.

  What were some of the circumstances that led you to do this research?

We were continually frustrated by the difficulties of accessing information on many of the reagents which seemed to be rumored about in the chemical community. There was a large selection of extremely valuable information in the published literature, unfortunately a lot of this data was being overlooked by synthetic chemists because it didn't appear in the traditional chemistry publications. Our aim was to provide a focal point to bring all this information together, providing a quick reference source for initial investigation.

The paper provides a summary of all the literature previously published in the area of supported reagents, i.e. these are chemical reagents that are bound to an insoluble support matrix. It’s a bit like a one-stop shopping catalogue—you’re not necessarily going to buy from the catalogue but it gives you some ideas about what's available.