To potentially improve the scope of the reaction, solubilising agents were introduced. Inspired by the work of Tian et al. sugar alcohols were considered a helpful tool to achieve an effective interplay between the catalyst and the organic coupling partners in the photoreaction. Additionally, cinchonidine derivatives were screened as literature-known inter-face active species that realise asymmetric transformations applied in industry. Sugar alcohols were used as reported by Tian et al. Elina Taskinen synthesized the alkaloid catalysts highlighted in Scheme 6. Compound 11 was chosen as the radical trapping reagent (Scheme 5). Interestingly, amino alcohols such as meglumine (13), N-ethyl D-glucamine (14) or miglitol (15) did not result in any product formation in the optimised reaction with dimethyl maleate (11). This may be explained by competitive coordination to Fe 3+ or the facile photo-oxidation of amines to their radical cation as a competing reaction. D-sorbit (16), dulcitol (17) and D-fructose ( ) allowed for the formation of products 12a and 12b in good yields (Figure ). Among the test sugar alcohols dulcitol (17) showed the lowest solubility in water.