Introduction

In the past 20 years, asymmetric catalysis has emerged as a powerful technique to synthesize enantiomerically enriched compounds that are required to achieve potency and selectivity in biology and medicine. This is due to the difficulties associated with accessing complex natural products of pharmaceutical relevance that contain chiral centers via the resolution of racemic mixtures or via synthesis using traditional chiron and auxiliary approaches. The increasing demand for such molecules with complex, diverse and desirable properties necessitated the development of innovative and economical methods, particularly involving catalysis, such as organocatalysis, ^1–34 metal catalysis ^35–48 or biocatalysis. ^49–53