Addition by Carbon Nucleophiles

The previous sections dealt with reactions in which the new carbon-carbon bond is formed by addition of the nucleophile to a carbonyl group. Another important method for alkylation of carbon nucleophiles involves addition to an electrophilic multiple bond. The electrophilic reaction partner is typically an a,(3-unsaturated ketone, aldehyde, or ester, but other electron-withdrawing substituents such as nitro, cyano, or sulfonyl also activate carbon-carbon double and triple bonds to nucleophilic attack. The reaction is called conjugate addition or the Michael reaction. 

More generally, many combinations of EWG substituents can serve as the anion-stabilizing and alkene-activating groups. Conjugate addition has the potential to form a bond a to one group and (3 to the other to form a a,y-disubstituted system. 

The scope of the conjugate addition reaction can be further expanded by use of Lewis acids in conjunction with enolate equivalents, especially silyl enol ethers and silyl ketene acetals. The adduct is stabilized by a new bond to the Lewis acid and products are formed from the adduct. 

Other kinds of nucleophiles such as amines, alkoxides, and sulfide anions also react with electrophilic alkenes, but we focus on the carbon-carbon bond forming reactions. 

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The electron-poor aromatic ring of 1-acylpyridinium ions is known to easily undergo nucleophilic addition by carbon nucleophiles an example was proposed by Comins and coworkers, who exploited the addition of zinc enolate 68 to enantiopure 67 (R = trans-2-(a-cumyl)cyclohexyl) in a total synthesis of (-F)-cannabisativine (equation 42)125. 

Azirines (three-membered cyclic imines) are related to aziridines by a single redox step, and these reagents can therefore function as precursors to aziridines by way of addition reactions. The addition of carbon nucleophiles has been known for some time [52], but has recently undergone a renaissance, attracting the interest of several research groups. The cyclization of 2-(0-tosyl)oximino carbonyl compounds - the Neber reaction [53] - is the oldest known azirine synthesis, and asymmetric variants have been reported. Zwanenburg et ah, for example, prepared nonracemic chiral azirines from oximes of 3-ketoesters, using cinchona alkaloids as catalysts (Scheme 4.37) [54]. 

Addition of carbon nucleophiles to vinylepoxides is of particular importance, since a new carbon-carbon bond is formed. It is of considerable tactical value that conditions allowing for regiocontrolled opening of vinyloxiranes with this type of nucleophiles have been developed. Reactions that proceed through fonnation of a rr-allyl metal intermediate with subsequent external delivery of the nucleophile, or that make use of a soft carbon nucleophile, generally deliver the SN2 product. In contrast, the Sn2 variant is often the major reaction pathway when hard nucleophiles are employed. In some methods a nucleophile can be delivered selectively at either the Sn2 or SN2 positions by changing the reaction conditions. 

Additions of carbon nucleophiles to vinylepoxides are well documented and can be accomplished by several different techniques. Palladium-catalyzed allylic alkylation of these substrates with soft carbon nucleophiles (pKa 10-20) proceeds under neutral conditions and with excellent regioselectivities [103, 104]. The sul-fone 51, for example, was cyclized through the use of catalytic amounts of Pd(PPh3)4 and bis(diphenylphosphino)ethane (dppe) under high-dilution conditions to give macrocycle 52, an intermediate in a total synthesis of the antitumor agent roseophilin, in excellent yield (Scheme 9.26) [115, 116]. 

The reactions that are discussed in this section involve addition of carbon nucleophiles to carbonyl centers having a potential leaving group. The tetrahedral intermediate formed in the addition step reacts by expulsion of the leaving group. The overall... 

The first organocatalyzed conjugate addition of a-substituted p-ketoester to a,P-unsaturated ketones was presented by Deng et al. [42] (Scheme 3). Although traditional Cinchona alkaloids were efficient catalysts for conjugate addition of carbon nucleophiles to nitroalkenes and sulfones, replacement of the C(9)-OH with an ester group (Q-7b) showed great improvement in stereoselectivity. The reaction is applicable to a variety of cyclic and acyclic enones (16,18). 

The asymmetric Mannich addition of carbon nucleophiles to imines catalyzed by the cyclohexane-diamine catalysts has developed significantly in the past decade. List and co-workers reported the asymmetric acyl-cyanantion of imines catalyzed by a cyclohexane-diamine catalyst [103], Using a derivative of Jacobsen s chiral urea catalyst, the authors optimized reaction conditions and obtained chiral iV-acyl-aminonitriles in high yield and enantioselectivities (Scheme 51). The scope of the reaction was explored with both aliphatic and aromatic imines, providing good to high selectivities for a variety of substrates. 

Formation of C-C bonds remains the ultimate challenge to the synthetic chemist. The employment of new synthetic methods in complex target synthesis can be frustrated by a lack of functional group tolerance and substrate specificity. These problems can be somewhat alleviated within conjugate addition reactions by the use of secondary amine catalysts where a number of important and highly selective methods have been developed. Two principle classes of nucleophile have been shown to be effective in the iminium ion activated conjugate addition of carbon nucleophiles to a,P-unsaturated carbonyl systems aryl, heteroaromatic and vinyl... 

The intramolecular addition of carbon nucleophiles to alkenes has received comparatively little attention relative to heterocyclization reactions. The first examples of Pd-catalyzed oxidative carbocyclization reactions were described by Backvall and coworkers [164-166]. Conjugaled dienes with appended al-lyl silane and stabilized carbanion nucleophiles undergo 1,4-carbochlorination (Eq. 36) and carboacetoxylation (Eq. 37), respectively. The former reaction employs BQ as the stoichiometric oxidant, whereas the latter uses O2. The authors do not describe efforts to use molecular oxygen in the reaction with allyl silanes however, BQ was cited as being imsuccessful in the reaction with stabihzed car-banions. Benzoquinone is known to activate Ti-allyl-Pd intermediates toward nucleophilic attack (see below. Sect. 4.4). In the absence of BQ, -hydride eUm-ination occurs to form diene 43 in competition with attack of acetate on the intermediate jr-allyl-Pd" species to form the 1,4-addition product 44. 

Substitution of a carbon monoxide ligand of complexes, such as 1, by the more electron-donating triphenylphosphane group (see Section 1.1.1.3.4.1.3.) provides chiral monophos-phane complexes, such as 3. Monophosphane complexes in general lack sufficient electrophilic-ity to react with amines or thiols, but react readily with amine anions at the /J-position, producing enolate anions such as 4, which may be quenched stereoselectively at the a-carbon by electrophiles46 (see Section 1.1.1.3.4.1.3.). The conformational and stereochemical issues involved are essentially identical to those already discussed in this section for the 1,4-additions of carbon nucleophiles. 

For example, 1-donor-substituted cyclopropancmethanols may be efficiently produced by cyclopropanation of suitably substituted enol ethers, by reaction of 1-donor-substituted 1-lithio-cyclopropanes with carbonyl compounds, or by addition of carbon nucleophiles to 1-donor-substituted cyclopropanecarbaldehydes. Oxaspiropentanes, important precursors of cyclobutanones, may as easily be obtained by epoxidation of methylenecyclopropanes, or by reaction of carbonyl compounds with diphenylsulfonium cyclopropanide and l-bromo-1-lithiocyclopropanes, respectively. Moreover, as the stereochemistry of most rearrangements may be efficiently controlled, asymmetric syntheses begin to appear. 

Alcohols are generally prepared on insoluble supports by reduction of carbonyl compounds or by addition of carbon nucleophiles to carbonyl compounds, although other strategies have also been used (Figure 7.1). 

Functionalized cyclopropyl derivatives can be prepared via Michael addition of carbon nucleophiles carrying a leaving group at the a-carbon followed by intramolecular substitution as depicted in equation 125. Anion-stabilizing a-substituents in the nucleophiles... 

The addition of carbon nucleophiles to complex (27), followed by demetallation, is equivalent to the y-alkylation of cyclohexenone. This overall transformation can also be accomplished directly via addition of electrophiles to dienolsilanes, but it becomes nontrivial for cases where the cyclohexenone C-4 position is already substituted.37 On the other hand, 1 -substituted cyclohexadienyliron complexes, such as (30), react very cleanly with certain carbon nucleophiles, at the substituted dienyl terminus. This provides useful methodology for the construction of 4,4-disubstituted cyclohexenones, and has been employed in a variety of natural product syntheses. 

If a new chiral centre is formed on a saturated six-membered ring, conformational control is a possibility. We have already seen conformational effects in the reduction of ketone 48 and the same kind of arguments apply to attack on ketones by carbon nucleophiles. The alcohol 59, needed to make an analgesic 58, can obviously be made from the ketone 60 and that is the result of conjugate addition to cyclohexenone.12... 

Addition of carbon nucleophiles to the C=C bond of a compound la,b includes reactions of enolizable carbonyl compounds, enol ethers, and ena-mines, as well as lithium alkyls and zinc alkyls. Condensation of the enolizable ketone 68 with la,b (M = Cr, W)26 is induced, for example, by catalytic amounts of triethylamine in pentane and under these conditions affords a 90% yield of crystalline pyranylidene complex 57 directly from the reaction mixture.102 This reaction proceeds via the 2-ethoxy-l-metallatriene L, which, because of the presence of triethylamine, rapidly undergoes ring closure to the pyranylidene (pyrylium ylide) complex 69 by 1,6-elimination of ethanol (Scheme 22). Chromanylidene complexes 71 are obtained from condensation of a /3-tetraIone 70 (R = H, OMe) with compound 1a,b. 

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