Phenolic ethers and carboxylic acids are found in a variety of active pharmaceutical ingredients in the pharmaceutical industry, for instance the potent fibrinogen receptor antagonist MK-383 (1), 1 and the PPAR α/γ agonist (2) 2 (Fig. 1). In addition, phenol ethers are important intermediates in medicinal chemistry. 3 Synthesis of these compounds typically suffers from the need to use protecting groups to obtain improved chemoselectivity of ether formation relative to ...
