Carbocyclizations improved catalyst

A method for highly efficient asymmetric cyclopropanation with control of both relative and absolute stereochemistry uses vinyldiazomethanes and inexpensive a-hydroxy esters as chiral auxiliaries263. This method was also applied for stereoselective preparation of dihydroazulenes. A further improvement of this approach involves an enantioselective construction of seven-membered carbocycles (540) by incorporating an initial asymmetric cyclopropanation step into the tandem cyclopropanation-Cope rearrangement process using rhodium(II)-(5 )-N-[p-(tert-butyl)phenylsulfonyl]prolinate [RhjtS — TBSP)4] 539 as a chiral catalyst (equation 212)264. 

A modification of this system was also used in intramolecular MBH reactions (also called as aldol cycloisomerization) [71, 74]. In this reaction, optically active pipecolinic acid 61 was found to be a better co-catalyst than proline, and allowed ee-values of up to 80% to be obtained, without a peptide catalyst. The inter-molecular aldol dimerization, which is an important competing side-reaction of the basic amine-mediated intramolecular MBH reaction, was efficiently suppressed in a THF H20 (3 1) mixture at room temperature, allowing the formation of six-membered carbocycles (Scheme 5.14). The enantioselectivity of the reaction could be improved via a kinetic resolution quench by adding acetic anhydride as an acylating agent to the reaction mixture and a peptide-based asymmetric catalyst such as 64 that mediates a subsequent asymmetric acylation reaction. The non-acylated product 65 was recovered in 50% isolated yield with ee >98%. 

The key step in the formation of tetrahydrofurans from acetals is the homolytic carbocyclization (23) -> (24). The method has been greatly improved by the use of a solid supported catalyst in the presence of sodium borohydride, which allows for impressive yields and a simple procedure for the isolation of products. ... 

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