By the Neber rearrangement

An a-amino ketone, obtained by the Neber rearrangement, can be further converted into an oxime tosylate, and then subjected to the Neber conditions a ,a -diamino ketones can be prepared by this route. 

Nitro groups attached to the benzene ring of chromans or chromanones may be reduced catalytically to give the amines but 3-aminochromanones (698) are usually obtained from the oxime (697) of the chromanone by the Neber rearrangement. The free bases are rather unstable (69JMC277). 

In the synthesis of various heterocycles from a-amino ketones, pyrazine formation can be a complicating side reaction due to the tendency of the a-amino ketone to dimerize. One way of avoiding this problem would be to generate the a-amino ketone in a protected form, specifically, as an a-amino acetal. Such derivatives allow the manipulation of the amino moiety as desired. Accordingly, the azirine intermediates derived from oxime tosylates by the Neber rearrangement are subsequently treated with acidic ethanol to furnish the corresponding a-amino acetals (equation 65). ° ... 

Important synthetic paths to azirines and aziridines involve bond reorganization, or internal addition, of vinylnitrenes. Indeed, the vinylnitrene-azirine equilibrium has been demonstrated in the case of trans-2-methyl-3-phenyl-l-azirine, which at 110 °C racemizes 2000 times faster than it rearranges to 2-methylindole (80CC1252). Created in the Neber rearrangement or by decomposition of vinyl azides, the nitrene can cyclize to the p -carbon to give azirines (Scheme 4 Section 5.04.4.1). 

One of the more important approaches to 1-azirines involves a similar base-induced cycloelimination reaction of a suitably functionalized ketone derivative (route c. Scheme 1). This reaction is analogous to route (b) (Scheme 1) used for the synthesis of aziridines wherein displacement of the leaving group at nitrogen is initiated by a -carbanionic center. An example of this cycloelimination involves the Neber rearrangement of oxime tosylate esters (357 X = OTs) to 1-azirines and subsequently to a-aminoketones (358) (71AHC-(13)45). The reaction has been demonstrated to be configurationally indiscriminate both syn and anti ketoxime tosylate esters afforded the same product mixture of a-aminoketones... 

The aminoketone 1, required as starting material, can be obtained by a Neber rearrangement from a A -tosylhydrazone. Another route to a-aminoketones starts with the nitrosation of an a-methylene carbonyl compound—often in situ—to give the more stable tautomeric oxime 7, which is then reduced in a subsequent step to yield 1 ... 

A ketoxime tosylate 1 can be converted into an a-amino ketone 2 via the Neber rearrangement by treatment with a base—e.g. using an ethoxide or pyridine. Substituent R is usually aryl, but may as well be alkyl or H substituent R can be alkyl or aryl, but not H. 

Unlike the Beckmann rearrangement, the outcome of the Neber rearrangement does not depend on the configuration of the starting oxime derivative E- as well as Z-oxime yield the same product. If the starting oxime derivative contains two different a-methylene groups, the reaction pathway is not determined by the configuration of the oxime, but rather by the relative acidity of the a-methylene protons the more acidic proton is abstracted preferentially. ... 

Isolation of an Intermediate. It is sometimes possible to isolate an intermediate from a reaction mixture by stopping the reaction after a short time or by the use of very mild conditions. For example, in the Neber rearrangement (18-12)... 

The Neber rearrangement was discovered in 1926 during the investigation of the Beckmann rearrangement. It was reported that treatment of ketoxime tosylate 517 with potassium ethoxide followed by acetic and hydrochloric acid produced a-amino ketones 518 (equation 231). 

Azirines are prepared by base-catalyzed cycloelimination of imine derivatives, e.g. as isolable intermediates in the Neber rearrangement (87 — 88) (77JA1514). 

The Neber rearrangement of oxime sulfonates has been considered to proceed via a nitrene pathway or an anion pathway. If the latter mechanism is operative, the use of a certain chiral base might result in the discrimination of two enantiotropic a-protons to furnish optically active a-amino ketones. Verification of this hypothesis was provided by realizing the asymmetric Neber rearrangement of simple oxime sulfonate 83,... 

One significant (and indeed the first) preparative pathway to this ring system is the Neber rearrangement of oxime sulfonates. Recently it has been shown that this process can be mildly influenced by the introduction of chiral auxiliaries. Thus, rearrangement of the tosyl oxime 186 (formed in situ from the oxime 185) in the presence of catalytic amounts of the chiral quaternary... 

The chemoenzymatic synthesis of a Ps adrenergic receptor agonist was developed by J.Y.L. Chung and co-workers. The key chiral 3-pyridylethanolamine intermediate was prepared via the Neber rearrangement of the ketoxime tosylate derived from 3-acetylpyridine. The oxime formation and the tosylation were carried out in a one-pot process using pyridine as the solvent. The solution of the ketoxime tosylate in ethanol was then cooled to 10 °C and potassium ethoxide was added. After the TsOK salt was removed from the reaction mixture, HCI gas was bubbled through the solution until the pH reached 2 and the 3-pyridylaminomethyl ketal was isolated as its di-HCI salt. 

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