Aziridinations asymmetric

The Darzens condensation reaction has been used with a wide variety of enolate equivalents that have been covered elsewhere. A recent application of this important reaction was appljed toward the asymmetric synthesis of aziridine phosphonates by Davis and coworkers.In this application, a THF solution of sulfinimine 34 (0.37 mmol, >98% ee) and iodophosphonate 35 (0.74 mmol) was treated with LiHMDS (0.74 mmol) at -78 °C to give aziridine 36 in 75% yield. Treatment of 36 with MeMgBr removed the sulfinyl group to provide aziridine 37 in 72% yield. 

Catalytic asymmetric epoxidation and aziridination mediated by sulfur ylides 98SL329. 

Asymmetric Synthesis of Epoxides and Aziridines from Aldehydes and I mines... 

This review summarizes the best asymmetric methods for preparing epoxides and aziridines from aldehydes (or ketones) and imines. 

Asymmetric transformation of imines into chiral aziridines remains less well developed than the analogous transformation of aldehydes into epoxides [49, 50, 51]. The reported methods can be divided into three conceptual categories involving... 

Catalysts prepared either from VAPOL (109) or from VANOL (110) ligands and triphenylborate were found to catalyze the asymmetric aziridination efficiently. Good to high yields, excellent enantioselectivities, and cis diastereoselectivities were observed with all the reported substrates, which included aromatic, heteroaromatic and aliphatic imines (Table 1.14). 

This is by far the most versatile route to the synthesis of ester-substituted aziridines, especially as the benzhydryl group can easily be cleaved by hydrogenolysis. Wulff has applied this methodology to a short asymmetric synthesis of the antibiotic (-)-chloramphenicol in four steps from p-nitrobenzaldehyde (Scheme 1.34) [61]. In this case it was found that treatment of the aziridine 111 with excess dichloroacetic acid gave the hydroxy acetamide directly, so no separate deprotection step was required. 

Table 1.15 Chiral guanidylium ylides for asymmetric synthesis of aziridines.

Aryl, Vinyl, and Alkyl Aziridines Stoichiometric Asymmetric Ylide-mediated Aziridination... 

Ruano has reported substrate-controlled asymmetric ylide aziridination by treatment of enantiopure sulfinyl imines 117 with dimethyloxosulfonium methylide 118 to form terminal aziridines [63], The chiral tert-butylsulfinyl group was shown... 

The sense of asymmetric induction could be tuned in two ways firstly through the chirality of the sufinyl group, and secondly through the use of dimethylox-osulfonium methylide (n = 1) or of dimethylsulfonium methylide (n = 0), which was found to provide aziridines with opposite diastereoselectivity. This was interpreted by assuming the process to be under thermodynamic control in the former... 

Table 1.16 Chiral tert-butylsulfinylimines in asymmetric aziridine synthesis.

Of course, the key limitation of the ylide-mediated methods discussed so far is the use of stoichiometric amounts of the chiral reagent. Building on their success with catalytic asymmetric ylide-mediated epoxidation (see Section 1.2.1.2), Aggarwal and co-workers have reported an aza version that provides a highly efficient catalytic asymmetric synthesis of trans-aziridines from imines and diazo compounds or the corresponding tosylhydrazone salts (Scheme 1.43) [68-70]. 

Table 1.17 Catalytic asymmetric ylide-mediated aziridination.

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