Asymmetric hydrogenation industrial application

I. M. Thommen, Homogeneous asymmetric hydrogenation Mature and fit for early stage drug development. Specialty Chemicals Magazine, May (2005). Hans-Ulrich Blaser, Felix Spindler and Marc Thommen, Industrial Applications m Handbook of Homogeneous Hydrogenation, (ed. J.G. de Vries and C. J. Elsevier), Wiley, (2007). 

The use of an analogous (S)-BINAP-Ru-diacetate catalyst with axial chirality has led to important industrial applications, such as the synthesis developed by Monsanto where the asymmetric hydrogenation is involved in the last step to yield naproxen, a widely prescribed, non-steroidal, anti-inflammatory drug (Equation (9)).96... 

From the point of view of efficiency and application to the industrial production of optically pure compounds the chiral catalyst procedure is the methodology of choice. In this context. Sharpless asymmetric epoxidation and dihydroxylation, Noyori-Takaya s second generation asymmetric hydrogenations and Jacobsen s epoxidation [3] have had a tremendous impact in the last few years and they constitute the basis of the newly spawned "chirotechnology" firms, as well as of the pharmaceutical, fine chemical and agriculture industries. 

A wide range of metals and ligand combinations have been demonstrated to effect the ATH reaction and in this book we concentrate on the systems that have demonstrated high activities and ees that would be the requirement of an industrial application. The initial breakthrough in this area came in 1995 with the report from Ohkuma et alP on the use of chiral monotosylated diamine complexes for asymmetric transfer hydrogenation. 

Arylation, olefins, 187, 190 Arylketimines, iridium hydrogenation, 83 Arylpropanoic acid, Grignard coupling, 190 Aspartame, 8, 27 Asymmetric catalysis characteristics, 11 chiral metal complexes, 122 covalently bound intermediates, 323 electrochemistry, 342 hydrogen-bonded associates, 328 industrial applications, 8, 357 optically active compounds, 2 phase-transfer reactions, 333 photochemistry, 341 polymerization, 174, 332 purely organic compounds, 323 see also specific complexes Asymmetric induction, 71, 155 Attractive interaction, 196, 216 Autoinduction, 330 Axial chirality, 18 Aza-Diels-Alder reaction, 220 Azetidinone, 44, 80 Aziridination, olefins, 207... 

Catalytic asymmetric hydrogenation processes have been at the forefront of practical applications. Following the classical Monsanto s L-DOPA production using DiPAMP-Rh catalyst, BINAP-Ru catalysts have been used in the industrial synthesis of a P-lactam key intermediate to caibapenem antibiotics (Takasago Int. Corp.), 1,2-propanediol (50 tons/year),... 

In the late sixties, several research groups in the U.S. (6), Europe (7), and Japan (8) initiated studies of homogeneous catalytic asymmetric syntheses. Of these efforts, the catalytic asymmetric hydrogenation of prochiral olefins reported by Knowles, et al. (6,9) attracted most attention. The importance of this technology was shown by its application in the Monsanto L-DOPA process which had since become an industrial flagship in catalytic asymmetric syntheses (Figure 1). 

Before leaving asymmetric hydrogenation reactions, we should mention one other related process that has acquired immense importance, again because of its industrial application. You have come across cit-ronellol a couple of times in this chapter already the corresponding aldehyde citronellal is even more important because it is an intermediate in the a synthesis of L-menthol by the Japanese chemical company Takasago. Takasago manufacture about 30% of the 3500 ton annual worldwide demand for L-menthol from citronellal by using an intramolecular ene reaction (a cycloaddition you met in Chapter 35). 

Reaction 9.1 has been extensively studied to establish the mechanism of asymmetric hydrogenation. The catalytic cycle proposed for the asymmetric hydrogenation of the methyl ester of a-acetamido cinamic acid with 9.14 as the precatalyst is shown in Fig. 9.3. As mentioned earlier, this reaction is one of the early examples of industrial applications of asymmetric catalysis for the manufacture of L-DOPA (see Table 1.1). 

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