Asymmetric electrophilic amination

This book is intended to provide an overview of several areas of research in which amination plays a key role, and to introduce the reader to new concepts that have been developed quite recently for generating new C - N bonds. As the pharmaceutical and chemical industries move rapidly away from the development of racemic compounds, the access to synthetic routes that lead efficiently to enantiomerically pure materials is becoming increasingly important. For this reason, most of the contributions in this book refer to asymmetric synthesis. However, no attempt has been made to present a comprehensive work, and important areas such as asymmetric hydroxyamination [1] have not been dealt with. Furthermore, it may be worth mentioning that viable, useful and comprehensive sources of information about the methodological approaches to electrophilic amination developed since 1985 have already been reported [2], and that a chapter in Houben-Weyl reviewing several aspects of the asymmetric electrophilic amination [3] compiles important contributions up to 1995. 

Asymmetric electrophilic amination reactions using silyl ketene acetals 1 and di-tert-butyl azodicarboxylate (DBAD) finally lead to a-hydrazino 3 and ( )-a-amino acids 415. 

Table VI. Yields and Rados of the Asymmetric Electrophilic Amination.

Denmark SE, Chatani N, Pansare SV. Asymmetric electrophilic amination of chiral phosphorus-stabilized anions. Tetrahedron Lett. 1992 48 2191-2208. 

Since then, optically active a-aminophosphonates have been obtained by a variety of methods including resolution, asymmetric phosphite additions to imine double bonds and sugar-based nitrones, condensation of optically active ureas with phosphites and aldehydes, catalytic asymmetric hydrogenation, and 1,3-dipolar cycloadditions. These approaches have been discussed in a comprehensive review by Dhawan and Redmore.9 More recent protocols involve electrophilic amination of homochiral dioxane acetals,10 alkylation of homochiral imines derived from pinanone11 and ketopinic acid,12 and alkylation of homochiral, bicyclic phosphonamides.13... 

Due to the synthetic and biological importance of amines and a-aminoketones, acids and esters, the introduction of amino functionality into carbon nucleophiles provides a convenient and practical route for their synthesis "In addition, a number of electrophilic amination methodologies have been developed for the asymmetric synthesis of amines and a-aminocarbonyl compounds " ". 

In the late 1980s various asymmetric procedures for the synthesis a-hydrazino acids, based on the electrophilic amination of an enolate bearing a chiral auxiliary by a dialkylazodi-carboxylate, have appeared in the literature (Table 1)J55 68 72i The a-hydrazino acid is recovered in high yield after cleavage of the chiral auxiliary and acidolysis of the Boc groups in 63. The D-enantiomer is obtained with 65, A and the L-enantiomer with 66,[551 67,169 71 and 68.[70] A chiral auxiliary is not required for hydrazinating chiral (i-hydroxyesters.172 ... 

The research work of recent years includes predominantly the epoxidation of alkenes9,200, asymmetric hydroxylations209,224-228 and the asymmetric oxidation of sulfides to sulfoxides205,209,229,230. Optical yields of practical significance were obtained (>90%). A detailed review published in 1991231 reports about the versatile use of oxaziridines in the field of the electrophilic amination. 

A novel asymmetric synthesis of a-amino acids via electrophilic amination has been demonstrated by Zheng and Armstrong and co-workers.94 No +NHBoc was observed when lithium tert-butyl-A-tosyloxycarbamate (LiBTOC) was reacted with zinc and lithium enolates of 48. Transmetallation of the lithium enolate with copper cyanide was necessary to generate a reactive amide cuprate, which then added efficiently to the electrophile. The electrophilic amination of chiral cuprates with LiBTOC provided an expedient approach to a-amino acids with predictable absolute configuration in high enantiomeric purity and good yield (Scheme 24.23). 

The Merck group has applied the electrophilic amination using lithium terf-butyl N-(tosyloxy)carbamate 9a to the chiral amide derived from (lS,2/ )-cw-amino-indanol [10] (Scheme 4). Treatment of 10 with n-Buli in THF at -78 °C gave the lithium enolate which was reacted with CuCN. The resulting amide cuprate was allowed to react with 9a. The authors found that a single diastereomer of a-Boc-protected amino amide 11 was formed. The sense of asymmetric induction observed was consistent with preferential approach of 9a from the least hindered face of the enolate. The removal of the chiral auxiliary with refluxing 6N HC1 afforded a-amino acids 12 in good yields and optical purities. 

On the other hand, an effective synthesis of P-aminotetralins including an asymmetric electrophilic animation by dialkylazodicarboxylates was reported by the same authors [44]. a-Tetralones 85 were transformed into chiral imines 86 using various enantiomerically pure amino ethers. The imines were treated with DTB AD or DBAD to afford the aminated products 87 which are the precursors of the non racemic P-aminotetralins 88 (Scheme 40 Table 3.7). 

Electrophilic amination with oxaziridines 91S327. A-Sulfonyloxaziridines as reagents in asymmetric hydroxylation of eno-lates 92CRV919. 

Diastereoselective enolate amination as an approach to a-aminoke-tones.42 We have demonstrated that the Mannich reaction is successful for the highly stereoselective introduction of P-aminoketone moieties (vide supra, Asymmetric Mannich Reactions24). The diastereofacially selective electrophilic amination of enolates is attractive as a complementary approach to the asymmetric... 

Asymmetric electrophilic a-amination of carbonyl groups in syntheses of a-amino acids and A-heterocycles 04EJO1377. 

In 2008, the Scheldt group reported a direct electrophilic amination via homoenolates catalyzed by N-heterocyclic carbenes using l-acyl-2-aryldiazenes as the electrophilic acceptors, which further increased the versatility of the homoenolate chemistry. It is worthwhile to note that only electron-rich substituents on the aryl component of the diazene could result in product formation (up to 84% yield), while electron-poor aryl substituents gave a lowyield (25%). An example of an asymmetric version of this new ami-nation reaction was achieved with the utilization of the chiral triazolium salt developed in their own group, providing the pyrazolidinone product in good yield (61%) and excellent enantioselectivity (90% ee) (Scheme 7.51). 

Lewis acid promoted reactions of silicon enolates, /.e., silyl enol ethers and ketene silyl acetals with various electrophiles have yielded a wealth of novel and selective synthetic methods. This combination of reagents has been used in the past to perform such reactions as aldol-condensations with aldehydes and acetals, imine-condensations, conjugate additions to a,P-enones, alkylations, electrophilic aminations, and Diels-Alder/cyclocondensations. Our own interest in this field has involved the use of titanium tetrachloride to promote the reaction of ketene silyl acetals with non-activated imines as an efficient route to P-lactams. This reaction has been applied to the asymmetric synthesis of P-lactams via a chiral imine-titanium tetrachloride template. We have also found that both ketene silyl acetals and vinylketene silyl acetals oxidativelly dimerize or cross-couple, in the presence of titanium tetrachloride to conveniently yield various diesters . Our present study concerns reactions of vinylketene silyl acetals with non-activated imines and vinylimines promoted by titanium and zirconium tetrachlorides. 

Lam, Y.-H. Houk, K. N. How Cinchona Alkaloid-Derived Primary Amines Control Asymmetric Electrophilic Fluorination of Cyclic Ketones. /. Am. Chem. Soc. 2014,136,9556-9559. 

Hanessian S, Bennani YL. Electrophilic amination and azi-dation of chiral a-alkyl phosphonamides asymmetric syntheses of a-amino a-alkyl phosphonic acids. Synthesis 1994 1272-1274. 

A-Acido imines (R R"C = N —X=0) like /V-acyl (X = CR) /V-sulfonyl [X = S(R)=0]2-7 or /V-diphenylphosphinoylimines [X = P(C6H5)2]3 are masked inline derivatives of ammonia. Compared to the imines themselves these activated derivatives are better electrophiles showing less tendency to undergo undesired deprotonation rather than addition of organometal-lics1812 The apparent advantages of these compounds have been exploited for asymmetric syntheses of amines, amides, amino acids and /J-lactams1-8 I6. 

In an another analogous set of reactions, Matsumura and coworkers have shown that electrochemically derived A -acyliminium ions can serve as electrophiles in asymmetric alkylation reactions (Scheme 25) [57]. In this case, the methoxycarbamate of a series of cyclic amines was oxidized in order to generate the AZ-a-methoxy carbamates. 

Combination of the Hantzsch ester mediated transfer hydrogenation together with chlorine (116) or fluorine (117) electrophiles allows for the formal addition of HCl or HF aaoss a double bond in a catalytic asymmetric manner (Scheme 48) [178], Within this paper the reactions were further refined by the use of two cycle-specific secondary amines which effectively operated independently within the same reaction mixture. Impressively, this allowed access to either diastereoisomer of the product depending upon the absolute configuration of the catalyst used in the second step of the sequence. 

Two years after the discovery of the first asymmetric Br0nsted acid-catalyzed Friedel-Crafts alkylation, the You group extended this transformation to the use of indoles as heteroaromatic nucleophiles (Scheme 11). iV-Sulfonylated aldimines 28 are activated with the help of catalytic amounts of BINOL phosphate (5)-3k (10 mol%, R = 1-naphthyl) for the reaction with unprotected indoles 29 to provide 3-indolyl amines 30 in good yields (56-94%) together with excellent enantioselec-tivities (58 to >99% ee) [21], Antilla and coworkers demonstrated that A-benzoyl-protected aldimines can be employed as electrophiles for the addition of iV-benzylated indoles with similar efficiencies [22]. Both protocols tolerate several aryl imines and a variety of substituents at the indole moiety. In addition, one example of the use of an aliphatic imine (56%, 58% ee) was presented. 

Isoindole is an interesting precursor for successive alkylations at the a- and a -positions because both are benzylic. Oxazoline ° and formamidine auxiliaries have been used to accomplish the a,a -dialkylation to give a C2-symmetric amine. The C2-symmetric amine products are envisioned as possible tools for a variety of asymmetric processes. The diastereoselectivity of the second alkylation is enhanced by the presence of the stereocenter formed in the first alkylation (Scheme 61). ° Several other electrophiles were evaluated with the formamidine auxiliary. ... 

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