Potier, Pierre

L. Ettouati, A. Ahond, O. Convert, C. Poupat, P. Potier, Pierre, Bull. 

This review is dedicated to Professor Pierre Potier, Member of the Sciences Academy of France, for his 68th birthday. 

We also express our gratitude to Pierre Potier, member of the French Academy of Sciences, President of the Foundation of Maison de la Chimie for having honored us by his presence at the opening of the Conference and his warm welcome to his "house". We also express our appreciation to Pascale Briand, who was the joint Director of Ecole Normale Supdrieure for Sciences during the preparation of the meeting, for her support and her heartening and visionary talk at the opening session. Let both receive our warmest thanks. 

I can only quote Pierre Potier, who is also a natural products chemist, who said about combinatorial chemistry that it is what God did too. The natural products in living organisms are just the products of combinatorial chemistry. As for myself, though, I have never been tempted to go into it. The real intellectual challenge is in the deconvolution of the mixture and in the identification of its components. 

The supply problem was partially solved through improvements in the extraction process from Pacific yew, but a more radical solution was achieved by French groups under the leadership of Pierre Potier in Paris and Andrew Greene in Grenoble. They discovered that the needles of the European yew, Taxus baccata, contained a structural relative of taxol called 10-deacetylbaccatin III to the extent of around 1 g per 3 kg of needles. This natural product could be converted to taxol in four chemical steps in a process discovered by Robert Holton in the USA. Since the European yew grows relatively rapidly, the needles could be harvested and the supply of taxol was thus assured. 

A first way out of the supply bottleneck was offered by partial synthesis, after it was discovered, that approximately 1 kg of 10-desacetylbaccatin 111 was extract-able with ethanol from three tonnes of needles from the European yew Taxus baccata), and can be purified by chromatography. [320, 321] In 1988, starting from the needles of numerous European yews growing on the imiversity campus at Gif-sur-Yvette, near Paris, Pierre Potier and Andrew Greene succeeded in carrying out the first partial synthesis of paclitaxel. [322, 323 ]... 

Acknowledgments The authors thank Region Rhone-Alpes (ARC Sante) and Fondation Pierre Potier pour le Developpement de la Chimie des Substances Naturelles et ses Applications for financial support. 

In September 2013, the French specialty chemicals manufacturer SEPPIC received the Pierre Potier award for chemistry innovations promoting sustainable development for its 100%-biobased hydrotrope heptylglucoside. This biodegradable hydrotrope is prepared from glucose and heptanol that is obtained from castor oil, using a process that complies with the 12 principles of green chemistry (Fig. 4)." ... 

Rg. 4 Route to the Seppic heptylpolyglucoside, a 100% bio-based sustainable hydrotrope that received the 2013 Pierre Potier price." ... 

Institut des Technologies Avancees en sciences du Vivant (ITAV) - Centre Pierre Potier, Universite de Toulouse - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Toulouse, France... 

Centre Pierre Potier, ITAV, University de Toulouse,... 

In Europe, Pierre Potier, of the French National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS) at Gif-sur-Yvette, was famous for looking for... 

Le Moullec, Y, Potier, O, Gentric, C and Pierre Leclerc, J (2008), Flow field and residence time distribution simulation of a cross-flow gas-liquid wastewater treatment reactor using CFD , Chemical Engineering Science, 63(9) 2436-2449. 

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