Recently, a research team led by Guo Qixiang from the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Southwest University—affiliated with the Jiusan Society—collaborated with a team led by Ni Shaofei from Shantou University to publish a research paper titled "Light-Induced Chiral Aldehyde/Palladium Catalysis-Enabled Asymmetric Allylic C–H Alkylation of Alkenes With NH₂-Unprotected Amino Acid Derivatives" in the international chemical journal *Angewandte Chemie International Edition*. This study achieves, under light irradiation, an asymmetric coupling reaction between the allylic position of alkenes and the α-carbon atom of NH₂-unprotected amino acid derivatives, catalyzed jointly by a chiral aldehyde and palladium metal. This approach enables the efficient construction of structurally diverse non-natural chiral amino acid derivatives, demonstrates novel applications of the chiral aldehyde/palladium joint catalytic system, and expands the application boundaries of allylic C–H functionalization reactions in the field of chiral synthetic chemistry.

Since 2014, Guo Qixiang's research team has been dedicated to the study of chiral aldehyde catalysis. The team has successively proposed an organic catalytic model for chiral aldehydes based on imine activation mechanisms (Chem. Sci. 2014,5, 1988; J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2018,140,9774) and a combined catalytic model involving chiral aldehydes and transition metals (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2019,141,5159). These three asymmetric catalytic models have undergone rapid development over the past decade. To date, Guo Qixiang's team has published 23 research papers in the field of chiral aldehyde catalysis, establishing a systematic and distinctive research framework. The team was also invited to contribute original research findings in this area to Acc. Chem. Res. (Acc. Chem. Res. 2024,57,776). Two of these works were included in the Academic Discipline Development Report of the Chinese Chemical Society, and ten works were featured in the article "Recent Progress of Asymmetric Catalysis from a Chinese Perspective" (CCS Chem. 2023,5, 2685) co-authored by Academician Zhou Qilin and others. The developed BINOL-based chiral aldehyde catalyst series has been dubbed "Guo's BINOLs" by international peers (Chem. Sci., 2024,15,5832), demonstrating the significant contributions made by Chinese chemists in the field of asymmetric catalysis.