Staff profile

William Brittain completed a masters degree in chemistry at the University of Birmingham in 2013. He then remained in Birmingham to conduct his PhD studies (awarded 2018) in the group of Prof. John Fossey with external supervision from Dr Ben Buckley (Loughborough University). For his PhD Will studied asymmetric copper catalysed reactions and in particular helped develop several asymmetric azide-alkyne cycloaddition reactions (click reactions). Will also took part in a visiting scholar program in 2015 and 2016 spending time in the laboratory of Prof. Eric Anslyn at the University of Texas at Austin. During his time in Texas he worked on the application of three-component boronic acid assemblies to asymmetric catalysis and high throughput enantiomeric excess (ee) determination.

Will moved to Durham University to take up a postdoctoral position with Prof. Steven Cobb in 2017. During his time in Durham he has contributed to a number of projects including peptide modification, protecting group development, biosynthetic pathway elucidation and asymmetric bi-aryl synthesis. In 2020 Will was awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship and appointed as an Assistant Professor (Research) to conduct independent research at Durham. He was recently appointed to the RSC Fluorine Interest Group committee. 

• Asymmetric Catalysis
• Organic Methodology
• Organofluorine Chemistry
• Peptide Chemistry

Journal Article

• Deck, K. E. V., & Brittain, W. D. G. (online). Synthesis of metal-binding amino acids. Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry, https://doi.org/10.1039/d4ob01326c
• Clarke, C. J., Gibbard, J. A., Brittain, W. D. G., & Brittain, J. R. R. (2024). Predicting the increase in electron affinity of phenoxy upon fluorination. Journal of Fluorine Chemistry, 277, Article 110306. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfluchem.2024.110306
• Zhao, Y., Meloni, F., Male, L., Le Duff, C. S., Brittain, W. D. G., Buckley, B. R., & Fossey, J. S. (2023). Synthesis of atropisomeric phosphino-triazoles and their corresponding gold(i) complexes. Organic Chemistry Frontiers, 10(14), 3460-3466. https://doi.org/10.1039/d3qo00322a
• Marsh, T. G., Santambrogio, A., Murray, B. J., Boulton, L. T., Aguilar, J. A., Yufit, D. S., Sandford, G., & Brittain, W. D. (2023). HFO‐1234yf as a CF3 Building Block: Synthesis of Trifluoromethyl Quinoline and Chromene Derivatives from Trifluoromethyl‐ynones. European Journal of Organic Chemistry, 26(11), Article e202300058. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejoc.202300058
• Beardmore, L. N., Cobb, S. L., & Brittain, W. D. (2022). One-pot ester and thioester formation mediated by pentafluoropyridine (PFP). Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry, 20(41), 8059-8064. https://doi.org/10.1039/d2ob01268e
• Brittain, W. D., & Coxon, C. R. (2022). Perfluoroaryl and Perfluoroheteroaryl Reagents as Emerging New Tools for Peptide Synthesis, Modification and Bioconjugation. Chemistry - A European Journal, 28(7), 10-23. https://doi.org/10.1002/chem.202103305
• Wang, S., Brittain, W. D., Zhang, Q., Lu, Z., Tong, M. H., Wu, K., Kyeremeh, K., Jenner, M., Yu, Y., Cobb, S. L., & Deng, H. (2022). Aminoacyl chain translocation catalysed by a type II thioesterase domain in an unusual non-ribosomal peptide synthetase. Nature Communications, 13(1), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-27512-0
• Brittain, W. D., & Cobb, S. L. (2021). Carboxylic Acid Deoxyfluorination and One-Pot Amide Bond Formation Using Pentafluoropyridine (PFP). Organic Letters, 23(15), https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.orglett.1c01953
• Brittain, W. D., Lloyd, C. M., & Cobb, S. L. (2020). Synthesis of Complex Unnatural Fluorine-Containing Amino Acids. Journal of Fluorine Chemistry, 239, Article 109630. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfluchem.2020.109630
• Brittain, W. D. G., & Cobb, S. L. (2020). Protecting Group Controlled Remote Regioselective Electrophilic Aromatic Halogenation Reactions. Journal of Organic Chemistry, 85(11), 6862-6871. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.joc.9b03322
• Maguire, O. R., Zhu, J., Brittain, W. D., Hudson, A. S., Cobb, S. L., & O’Donoghue, A. C. (2020). N-Terminal speciation for native chemical ligation. Chemical Communications, 56(45), 6114-6117. https://doi.org/10.1039/d0cc01604g
• Brittain, W. D., & Cobb, S. L. (2019). Tetrafluoropyridyl (TFP): a general phenol protecting group readily cleaved under mild conditions. Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry, 17(8), 2110-2115. https://doi.org/10.1039/c8ob02899k
• Brittain, W. D., Dalling, A. G., Sun, Z., Duff, C. S. L., Male, L., Buckley, B. R., & Fossey, J. S. (2019). Coetaneous catalytic kinetic resolution of alkynes and azides through asymmetric triazole formation. Scientific Reports, 9(1), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-50940-4
• Steer, A., Bolt, H., Brittain, W., & Cobb, S. (2018). A Direct Route for the Preparation of Fmoc/OtBu Protected Iodotyrosine. Tetrahedron Letters, 59(27), 2644-2646. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tetlet.2018.05.061
• Grigolato, L., Brittain, W., Hudson, A., Czyzewska, M., & Cobb, S. (2018). Synthesis of pentafluorosulfanyl (SF5) containing aromatic amino acids. Journal of Fluorine Chemistry, 212, 166-170. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfluchem.2018.06.006
• Fossey, J. S., Anslyn, E. V., Brittain, W. D., Bull, S. D., Chapin, B. M., Le Duff, C. S., James, T. D., Lees, G., Lim, S., Lloyd, J. A., Manville, C. V., Payne, D. T., & Roper, K. A. (2017). Rapid Determination of Enantiomeric Excess via NMR Spectroscopy: A Research-Informed Experiment. Journal of Chemical Education, 94(1), https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.6b00355
• Brittain, W. D., Buckley, B. R., & Fossey, J. S. (2016). Asymmetric Copper-Catalyzed Azide–Alkyne Cycloadditions. ACS Catalysis, 6(6), https://doi.org/10.1021/acscatal.6b00996
• Brittain, W. D., Chapin, B. M., Zhai, W., Lynch, V. M., Buckley, B. R., Anslyn, E. V., & Fossey, J. S. (2016). The Bull–James assembly as a chiral auxiliary and shift reagent in kinetic resolution of alkyne amines by the CuAAC reaction. Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry, 14(46), https://doi.org/10.1039/c6ob01623e
• Fossey, J. S., & Brittain, W. D. (2015). The CASE 2014 symposium: Catalysis and sensing for our environment, Xiamen 7th–9th November 2014. Organic Chemistry Frontiers, 2(2), https://doi.org/10.1039/c4qo90045f
• Cao, Z.-Y., Brittain, W. D., Fossey, J. S., & Zhou, F. (2015). Recent advances in the use of chiral metal complexes with achiral ligands for application in asymmetric catalysis. Catalysis Science & Technology, 5(7), https://doi.org/10.1039/c5cy00182j
• Brittain, W. D., Buckley, B. R., & Fossey, J. S. (2015). Kinetic resolution of alkyne-substituted quaternary oxindoles via copper catalysed azide–alkyne cycloadditions. Chemical Communications, 51(97), https://doi.org/10.1039/c5cc04886a