Dr Maurice Médebielle

About Maurice

Maurice obtained his undergraduate degree from the University Paris 7 (now University Paris Cité) and completed his MSc’s research under the supervision of Prof. Jean Pinson (University Paris 7) in 1987. He then pursued doctoral studies under the supervision of Profs. Jean-Michel Savéant and Jean Pinson (Université Paris 7), working on the mechanism of the electrochemical reduction of perfluoroalkyl halides and their electro-catalytical synthetic transformations. After obtaining his PhD degree in 1990, he joined the group of Prof. Richard Dick Chambers (Durham University, UK) in November 1990 as a postdoctoral fellow, where he worked on the free-radical synthesis of fluorinated monomers and their reactivity in collaboration with Dow Corning (USA). He then moved back to the laboratory of Prof. Jean-Michel Savéant in Paris where he was appointed CNRS researcher in 1991. He obtained his Habilitation de Recherche (HDR) in January 2000 and stayed at the Université Paris 7 until August 2000. He then moved to University Lyon 1 where here is currently a Directeur de Recherche at the CNRS in the SCORE research team.  Maurice was on leave at Brigham Young University (USA) in the group of Morris J. Robins (1993) working on nucleoside chemistry and at the University of Florida (USA) in the group of Prof. William R. Dolbier, Jr (1997) where he developed the tetrakis(dimethylamino)ethylene (TDAE)-mediated nucleophilic difluoromethylation reactions. He was also a JSPS Short-Term Research Fellow (2004) at Kobe University (Japan).

Research interests

Maurice has been active in the field of electron-transfer driven chemistry to prepare organic molecules of synthetic and biological relevance, especially fluorinated skeletons. These redox transformations can be initiated using organic electron donors, such as the tetrakis(dimethylamino)ethylene (TDAE), or by electro- and photo-catalytical activation. He is applying these efforts to synthesize new biologically relevant substances and drug-like structures, novel scaffolds but also to propose new routes to known bioactive molecules and possible extension to new promising analogues.
The development of new potential fluorinated electrolytes for lithium-battery applications as well as novel redox-active organic molecules as new redox mediators, and or electrolytes for organic redox flow batteries (ORFBs), are currently pursued within national and international collaborative projects.
Besides his interest in redox chemistry, Maurice has been the leader in projects aiming at the development of new anti-infective agents and their biological evaluation (Malaria and HIV).

Selected Publications

Access to cyclic gem-difluoroacyl scaffolds via electrochemical and visible light photocatalytic radical tandem cyclization of heteroaryl chlorodifluoromethyl ketones. C. Adouama, R. Keyrouz, G. Pilet, C. Monnereau, D. Gueyrard, T. Noël and M. Médebielle, Chem. Comm., 2017, 53, 5653.

Room temperature and transition-metal-free intramolecular a-arylation of ketones: a mild access to tetracyclic indoles and 7-aza indoles. C. Adouama, M. E. Buden, W. D. Guerra, M. Puiatti, B. Joseph, S. M. Barolo, R. A. Rossi and M. Médebielle. Org. Lett., 2019, 21, 320.

Electrochemical trifluoromethylselenolation of alkyl halides. K. Grollier, C. Chiazza, A. Tlili, T. Billard, M. Médebielle and J. C. Vantourout. Eur. J. Org. Chem., 2022, http://doi.org/10.1002/ejoc.202200123