Asymmetric catalysis Diels-Alder-type reactions

Keck also investigated asymmetric catalysis with a BINOL-derived titanium complex [102,103] for the Mukaiyama aldol reaction. The reaction of a-benzyloxyalde-hyde with Danishefsky s dienes as functionalized silyl enol ethers gave aldol products instead of hetero Diels-Alder cycloadducts (Sch. 40) [103], The aldol product can be transformed into hetero Diels-Alder type adducts by acid-catalyzed cyclization. The catalyst was prepared from BINOL and Ti(OPr )4, in 1 1 or 2 1 stoichiometry, and oven-dried MS 4A, in ether under reflux. They reported the catalyst to be of BINOL-Ti(OPr% structure. 

During the last decade, use of oxazaborolidines and dioxaborolidines in enantioselective catalysis has gained importance. [1, 2] One of the earliest examples of oxazaborolidines as an enantioselective catalyst in the reduction of ketones/ketoxime ethers to secondary alco-hols/amines was reported by Itsuno et al. [3] in which (5 )-valinol was used as a chiral ligand. Since then, a number of other oxazaborolidines and dioxaborolidines have been investigated as enantioselective catalysts in a number of organic transformations viz a) reduction of ketones to alcohols, b) addition of dialkyl zinc to aldehydes, c) asymmetric allylation of aldehydes, d) Diels-Alder cycloaddition reactions, e) Mukaiyama Michael type of aldol condensations, f) cyclopropana-tion reaction of olefins. 

Stereoselective synthesis of /1-amino esters via asymmetric aldol-type and aza-Diels-Alder reactions has been reviewed.81 Siliranes react cleanly with benzaldehyde to produce oxasilacyclopentanes—with inversion—under conditions of Bu OK catalysis enolizable aldehydes yield silyl enol ethers.82... 

The third part of this chapter reviews previously described catalytic asymmetric reactions that can be promoted by chiral lanthanoid complexes. Transformations such as Diels-Alder reactions, Mukaiyama aldol reactions, several types of reductions, Michael addition reactions, hydrosilylations, and hydroaminations proceed under asymmetric catalysis in the presence of chiral lanthanoid complexes. 

Several researchers have reported synthetic approaches based on asymmetric Diels-Alder reactions catalyzed by TADDOL-Ti complexes [117-120]. Dendritic [121] and polymer-supported TADDOL-Ti complexes [122] have also been employed as recoverable and reusable catalysts to give comparatively high enantioselectivity. Transition-state models have been proposed independently by several groups for TADDOL-type titanium catalysis [121,123]. 

As shown above, asymmetric catalysis of Diels-Alder reactions has been achieved by use of chiral titanium complexes bearing chiral diol ligands. Yamamoto has reported a chiral helical titanium complex derived from Ti(OPr )4 and a BINOL-derived tetraol ligand (Sch. 54) [134], The Diels-Alder products are obtained with uniformly high enantioselectivity, irrespective of the substituent pattern of a,/3-unsaturated aldehydes. Corey has also reported a new type of chiral titanium complex derived from an amino alcohol ligand (Sch. 55) [135]. The chiral titanium complex serves as an efficient asymmetric catalyst for the reaction of 2-bromoacrolein the Diels-Alder product is obtained with high enantioselectivity. 

Note at the outset that asymmetric catalysis in the synthesis of fine chemicals is rarely a single-step process that converts a reactant directly to the final product. It is usually one of the steps in a total synthesis but is often the key step. Hence the analysis of the overall yield will be based on the methods described in Chapter 5. There are many types of reactions where asymmetric catalysis can be applied. The most important of these are C-C bond-forming reactions such as alkylation or nucleophilic addition, oxidation, reduction, isomerization, Diels-Alder reaction, Michael addition, deracemization, and Sharpless expoxidation (of allyl alcohols). A few representative examples (homogeneous and heterogeneous) are given in Table 9.6. 

Although Diels-Alder reactions provided the first examples for the great potential of asymmetric iminium catalysis, it must be pointed out that by far the most applications of this type of catalysis in natural product syntheses have been reported for conjugate additions of different nucleophiles to iminium-activated a, 3-tmsatu-rated acceptor molecules. The following sections will give an overview based on the type of nucleophiles employed in such transformations. 

Numerous investigations of highly enantioselective reactions catalyzed by chiral phosphoric acids (86) continue to be reported. The potential of this type of Bronsted acid in asymmetric catalysis has been demonstrated. The first asymmetric direct hetero Diels-Alder reaction catalyzed by a chiral Bronsted acid has been described. Thus chiral phosphoric acid (86) exhibited superior enantioselectivity, affording fairly good yields and enantioselectivities for reactions of aromatic aldimines with cyclohexenone (Scheme 21). ... 

The enantioselective Diels-Alder reaction is another main motif in chiral Lewis acid catalysis. In 1996, Itsuno and coworkers reported an asymmetric Diels-Alder reaction using polymer-supported catalysts under flow conditions. Immobilized chiral oxazoboloridune (34) was prepared from a copolymer of N-sulfonylvabne and borane having styrene moiety, affording the Diels-Alder adduct in an enantioselective manner (up to 71% yield) [126], The authors used a gravity-fed-type column for the flow reaction. Ti-TADDOL-functionalized monolithic resins (35) were developed by Altava and Luis for the asymmetric Diels-Alder reaction (Scheme 7.30). 

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