Biological active compounds asymmetric synthesis

The last two examples (eqs. 217 and 218) represent multikilogram scale asymmetric syntheses of practically important, biologically active compounds. In synthesis depicted on equation 217 simple crystallization of the product upgraded optical purity to 97% ee. 

The previous section discussed chelation enforced intra-annular chirality transfer in the asymmetric synthesis of substituted carbonyl compounds. These compounds can be used as building blocks in the asymmetric synthesis of important chiral ligands or biologically active natural compounds. Asymmetric synthesis of chiral quaternary carbon centers has been of significant interest because several types of natural products with bioactivity possess a quaternary stereocenter, so the synthesis of such compounds raises the challenge of enantiomer construction. This applies especially to the asymmetric synthesis of amino group-substituted carboxylic acids with quaternary chiral centers. 

Optically active aldehydes are important precursors for biologically active compounds, and much effort has been applied to their asymmetric synthesis. Asymmetric hydroformylation has attracted much attention as a potential route to enantiomerically pure aldehyde because this method starts from inexpensive olefins and synthesis gas (CO/H2). Although rhodium-catalyzed hydrogenation has been one of the most important applications of homogeneous catalysis in industry, rhodium-mediated hydroformylation has also been extensively studied as a route to aldehydes. 

Recent research deals with stereoselective 1,3-dipolar cycloadditions of nitrones for the syntheses of alkaloids and aza heterocycles asymmetric synthesis of biologically active compounds such as glycosidase inhibitors, sugar mimetics, /3-lactams, and amino acids synthesis of peptido-mimetics and peptides chemistry of spirocyclopropane heterocycles synthesis of organic materials for molecular recognition and photochemical applications. 

The asymmetric reduction of prochiral ketones to their corresponding enantiomerically enriched alcohols is one of the most important molecular transformations in synthetic chemistry (20,21). The products are versatile intermediates for the synthesis of pharmaceuticals, biologically active compounds and fine chemicals (22,23). The racemic reversible reduction of carbonyls to carbinols with superstoichiometric amounts of aluminium alkoxides in alcohols was independently discovered by Meerwein, Ponndorf and Verley (MPV) in 1925 (21—26). Only in the early 1990s, first successful versions of catalytic... 

Optically active epoxides are important building blocks in asymmetric synthesis of natural products and biologically active compounds. Therefore, enantio-selective epoxidation of olefins has been a subject of intensive research in the last years. The Sharpless [56] and Jacobsen [129] epoxidations are, to date, the most efficient metal-catalyzed asymmetric oxidation of olefins with broad synthetic scope. Oxidative enzymes have also been successfully utilized for the synthesis of optically active epoxides. Among the peroxidases, only CPO accepts a broad spectrum of olefinic substrates for enantioselective epoxidation (Eq. 6), as shown in Table 8. 

Since the discovery and development of highly efficient Rh catalysts with chiral diphosphites and phosphine-phosphites in the 1990s, the enantioselectivity of asymmetric hydroformylation has reached the equivalent level to that of asymmetric hydrogenation for several substrates. Nevertheless, there still exist substrates that require even further development of more efficient chiral ligands, catalyst systems, and reaction conditions. Diastereoselective hydroformylation is expected to find many applications in the total synthesis of complex natural products as well as the syntheses of biologically active compounds of medicinal and agrochemical interests in the near future. Advances in asymmetric hydrocarboxylation has been much slower than that of asymmetric hydroformylation in spite of its high potential in the syntheses of fine chemicals. 

The preparation of stereochemically-enriched compounds by asymmetric acyl transfer using chiral nucleophihc catalysts has received significant attention in recent years [1-8]. One of the most synthetically useful and probably the most studied acyl transfer reaction to date is the kinetic resolution (KR) of ec-alcohols, a class of molecules which are important building blocks for the synthesis of a plethora of natural products, chiral ligands, auxiliaries, catalysts and biologically active compounds. This research area has been in the forefront of the contemporary organocatalysis renaissance [9, 10], and has resulted in a number of attractive and practical KR protocols. 

In planning the synthesis of biologically active compounds, strategies using aldonolactones or other compounds from the chiral pool should therefore continue to be considered, since they can provide attractive routes in comparison with alternative methods by asymmetric synthesis. 

In continuation of our investigations on asymmetric nucleophilic acylations with lithiated a-aminonitriles [40], we envisaged the asymmetric synthesis of 3-substituted 5-amino-4-oxo esters A, bearing both a-amino ketone and 5-amino ester functionalities (Scheme 1.1.14) [41]. Since a-amino ketones are precursors of chiral p-amino alcohols [42, 43] and chiral amines [43], their asymmetric synthesis has the potential to provide valuable intermediates for the synthesis of biologically active compounds, including peptidomimetics [44]. The retrosynthetic analysis of A leads to the a-aminoacyl carbanion B and p-ester carbocation... 

The conjugate addition of organometallic reagents to a./i-unsaturated compounds is one of the basic methods in our repertoire for the construction of carbon-carbon bonds. These addition reactions have been used as key steps in the synthesis of numerous biologically active compounds, and show a broad scope due to the large variety of donor and acceptor compounds that can be employed. It is evident that a tremendous effort has been devoted over the last three decades to develop asymmetric variants of this reaction. ... 

This reaction has even been used for the asymmetric synthesis of useful biologically active compounds on an industrial scale [78]. 

The BINAP-Ru catalyzed asymmetric hydrogenation of difunctionalized ketones is applicable to synthesis of several biologically active compounds [lc, 193,195,196]. In Figure 1.12, the stereocenter determined by the BINAP chemistry is labeled by R or S. 

D-Proline (16) is an unnatural amino acid and an important chiral synthon for the synthesis of a variety of biologically active compounds. There are few chemical methods for asymmetric synthesis of this compound. Almost all processes for the production of D-proline at scale are based on resolution of d/-prolinc, and most of them involve the racemization of L-proline (17). 

Chiral non-racemic cyclopropanes are a common motif in natural and synthetic biologically active compounds [85]. They represent an important target in asymmetric synthesis, and a range of catalytic methods have been developed for their synthesis [6, 47, 86-90]. Many of the existing methods make use of a chiral metal complex as catalyst [6], but organocatalytic methods have also been developed. In this section we will review methods using a substoichiometric amount of a chiral ylide as a catalyst for cyclopropanation [91]. 

The more recent work on this area deals predominantly with the asymmetric induction in aza Diels-Alder reactions in order to develop a novel powerful tool for the stereoselective synthesis of biologically active compounds. Thus, Wald-mann et al. demonstrated the utility of chiral imines derived from enantiopure amino acids by obtaining the cycloadduct 3-3 in very good diastereoselectivity from imine 3-1 and Brassard s diene 3-2 (Fig. 3-1) [181]. 

In principle, three approaches may be adopted for obtaining an enantio-merically pure compound. These are resolution of a racemic mixture, stereoselective synthesis starting from a chiral building block, and conversion of a prochiral substrate into a chiral product by asymmetric catalysis. The last approach, since it is catalytic, means an amplification of chirality that is, one molecule of a chiral catalyst produces several hundred or a thousand molecules of the chiral product from a starting material that is optically inactive In the past two decades this strategy has proved to be extremely useful for the commercial manufacture of a number of intermediates for biologically active compounds. A few recent examples are given in Table 9.1. 

The versatility and efficiency of this method were demonstrated in the first catalytic asymmetric synthesis of (—)-phaseolinic acid 188 , a biologically active compound of the paraconic acid family (equation 50). Using the 1,4-addition-aldol pathway, the paraconic acid skeleton could be synthesized in only four synthetic transformations with excellent stereoselectivities and 54% overall yield. 

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