Catalytic Asymmetric 1,2-Addition Reactions

Additions of soft carbon nucleophiles to the carbonyl group of aldehydes, ketones and imines are reactions of obvious synthetic significance. For historical reasons, it is appropriate to start this short overview with the hydrocyanation reaction, as the addition of hydrogen cyanide to 

Examples of 1,2-additions to aldehydes and ketones of other pronucleophiles prone to an easy soft-enolisation process i.e. acidic enough. 

Shortly after, the same authors proposed a more convenient protocol for this CN promoted Mannich reaction. Employing a-amido sulfones as imine 

Prakash and coworkers. High yields and enantiomeric excesses of both enantiomers of the products, depending on the eatalyst used, indicated the usefulness of the developed methodology (Seheme 14.17). 

Whereas an activated hexafluoropropyl ester is essential for reactivity and enantioselectivity with simple aldehydes, the engagement of aerolein and other acrylates as olefin partners is possible when isatins are used as MBH 

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Catalytic Asymmetric Addition Reactions of Cu(I)-Conjugated Soft Carbon Nucleophiles... 

The preparation of salt-free diorganozinc reagents is quite important in many syntheses, especially for catalytic asymmetric addition reactions. Such diorganozinc reagents can be obtained by usual transmetalation from Grignard reagents followed by the addition of dioxane, which causes the precipitation of all the Mg-salts from the solution due to the formation of dioxane complexes. ... 

Ligands for catalytic Mukaiyama aldol addition have primarily included bidentate chelates derived from optically active diols,26 diamines,27 amino acid derivatives,28 and tartrates.29 Enantioselective reactions induced by chiral Ti(IY) complex have proved to be one of the most powerful stereoselective transformations for synthetic chemists. The catalytic asymmetric aldol reaction introduced by Mukaiyama is discussed in Section 3.4.1. 

Lewis acids as water-stable catalysts have been developed. Metal salts, such as rare earth metal triflates, can be used in aldol reactions of aldehydes with silyl enolates in aqueous media. These salts can be recovered after the reactions and reused. Furthermore, surfactant-aided Lewis acid catalysis, which can be used for aldol reactions in water without using any organic solvents, has been also developed. These reaction systems have been applied successfully to catalytic asymmetric aldol reactions in aqueous media. In addition, the surfactant-aided Lewis acid catalysis for Mannich-type reactions in water has been disclosed. These investigations are expected to contribute to the decrease of the use of harmful organic solvents in chemical processes, leading to environmentally friendly green chemistry. 

LLB, KHMDS (0.9 equiv to LLB) and H20 (1 equiv to LLB), which presumably forms a heteropolymetallic complex (LLB-ID, was found to be a superior catalyst for the direct catalytic asymmetric aldol reaction giving 49 in 89 % yield and 79 % ee (using 8 mol% of LLB). We employed this method to generate KOH in situ because of its insolubility in THE The use of KO-t-Bu instead of KHMDS gave a similar result, indicating that HMDS dose not play a key role. Interestingly, further addition of H20 (1 equiv with respect to LLB) resulted in the formation of 49 in 83 % yield and higher ee. The powder obtained from the cata-... 

A catalytic asymmetric amination reaction has been developed using Cu(2+) catalysts (246). The azodicarboxylate derivative 392 reacts with enolsilanes in the presence of catalyst 269c to provide the adducts in high enantioselectivity, Eq. 213. As observed in the Mukaiyama Michael reactions, alcoholic addends proved competent in increasing the rate of this reaction. Indeed, in the presence of tri-fluoroethanol as additive, the reaction time decreases from 24 to 3 h. 

These first examples of the catalytic asymmetric aldol reaction not only provided first results that could be utilized for such transformations but also highlighted the problems that had to be overcome in further elaborations of this general method. It was shown that truly catalytic systems were required to perform an enantioselective and diastereoselective vinylogous aldol reaction, and it became obvious that y-substituted dienolates that serve as propionate-acetate equivalents provide an additional challenge for diastereoselective additions. To date, the latter problem has only been solved for diastereoselective additions under Lewis acid catalysis (vide infra) (Scheme 4, Table 3). 

The catalytic asymmetric preparation of a-chiral amines, by addition of organo-metallic reagents to C=N bonds, is one of the most important reactions in homogeneous catalysis [26]. However, the catalytic asymmetric addition of simple alkylmetals has been achieved only in recent years. 

Ferrocene-derived ligand (l ,S)-Josiphos, which is widely used for catalytic asymmetric hydrogenation reactions, is also a good catalyst for the asymmetric copper-catalyzed 1,4-addition. Reaction in f-BuOMe in the presence of 6 mol% of this ligand gives products with up to 98%. ... 

It is also interesting to point out that bipyridine RZnCHiX complexes are not reactive in the cyclopropanation reaction due to the high basicity of the bipyridine ligand. However, the addition of zinc iodide promotes the cyclopropanation reaction since uncomplexed IZnCH2X can be formed via an iodide-halomethyl group exchange. This approach has been used in catalytic asymmetric cyclopropanation reactions vide infra). 

Until then, only heterogeneous catalyst had been successful. However, in the mid-1980s, the work of Ito et al. led to an outstanding discovery in a catalytic asymmetric aldol reaction. In this case, enantioselectivity was given by a chiral ferrocene diphosphine ligand, with a carbon nucleophile addition to a carbonyl... 

Since then, efficient catalytic asymmetric methods have been developed for the addition of silyl enol ethers or silyl ketene acetals to imines with chiral metal catalysts [29-34], Recently, direct catalytic asymmetric Mannich reactions which do not require preformation of enolate equivalents have appeared. 

The catalytic asymmetric Mannich reaction of lithium enolates with imines was reported in 1997 using an external chiral ligand [36]. First, it was found that reactions of lithium enolates with imines were accelerated by addition of external chiral ligands. Then, it was revealed that reactions were in most cases accelerated in the presence of excess amounts of lithium amides. A small amount of a chiral source was then used in the asymmetric version [(Eq. (8)], and chiral ligands were optimized to achieve suitable catalytic turnover [37]. 

Carbonyl Addition Diethylzinc has been added to benzaldehyde at room temperature in the presence of an ephedra-derived chiral quat (8) to give optically active secondary alcohols, a case in which the chiral catalyst affords a much higher enantioselectivity in the solid state than in solution (47 to 48, Scheme 10.6) [30]. Asymmetric trifluoromethylation of aldehydes and ketones (49 to 50, Scheme 10.6 [31]) is accomplished with trifluoromethyl-trimethylsilane, catalyzed by a quaternary ammonium fluoride (3d). Catalyst 3d was first used by the Shioiri group for catalytic asymmetric aldol reactions from silyl enol ethers 51 or 54 (Scheme 10.6) [32]. Various other 1,2-carbonyl additions [33] and aldol reactions [34] have been reported. 

An important feature of this reaction is that in contrast to most other catalytic asymmetric Mannich reactions, a-unbranched aldehydes are efficient electrophiles in the proline-catalyzed reaction. In addition, with hydroxy acetone as a donor, the corresponding syn-l, 2-aminoalcohols are furnished with high chemo-, regio-, diastereo-, and enantioselectivities. The produced ketones 14 can be further converted to 4-substituted 2-oxazolidinones 17 and /i-aminoalcohol derivatives 18 in a straightforward manner via Baeyer-Villiger oxidation (Scheme 9.4) [5]. 

Other reviews deal with aldol additions of group 1 and 2 enolates,103 direct catalytic asymmetric aldol reactions catalysed by chiral metal complexes,104 the exploitation of multi-point recognition in catalytic asymmetric aldols,105 and recent progress in asymmetric organocatalysis of aldol, Mannich, Michael, and other reactions.106... 

A catalytic asymmetric epoxidation reaction of a,/l-unsaturated esters via conjugate addition of an oxidant using chiral yttrium-biphenyldiol-Ph3As=0 complexes has been developed. Yields up to 90% and ees up to 99% have been achieved.43... 

The capability of L-proline - as a simple amino acid from the chiral pool - to act like an enzyme has been shown by List, Lemer und Barbas III [4] for one of the most important organic asymmetric transformations, namely the catalytic aldol reaction [5]. In addition, all the above-mentioned requirements have been fulfilled. In the described experiments the conversion of acetone with an aldehyde resulted in the formation of the desired aldol products in satisfying to very good yields and with enantioselectivities of up to 96% ee (Scheme 1) [4], It is noteworthy that, in a similar manner to enzymatic conversions with aldolases of type I or II, a direct asymmetric aldol reaction was achieved when using L-proline as a catalyst. Accordingly the use of enol derivatives of the ketone component is not necessary, that is, ketones (acting as donors) can be used directly without previous modification [6]. So far, most of the asymmetric catalytic aldol reactions with synthetic catalysts require the utilization of enol derivatives [5]. The first direct catalytic asymmetric aldol reaction in the presence of a chiral heterobimetallic catalyst has recently been reported by the Shibasaki group [7]. 

The Strecker reaction is defined as the addition of HCN to the condensation product of a carbonyl and amine component to give a-amino nitriles. Lipton and coworkers reported the first highly effective catalytic asymmetric Strecker reaction, using synthetic peptide 43, a modification of Inoue s catalyst (38), which was determined to be inactive for the Strecker reactions of aldimines (see Scheme 6.5) [62], Catalyst 43 provided chiral a-amino nitrile products for a number of N-benzhydryl imines (42) derived from substituted aromatic (71-97% yield 64->99% ee) and aliphatic (80-81% yield <10-17% ee) aldehydes, presumably through a similar mode of activation to that for hydrocyanations of aldehydes (Table 6.14). Electron-deficient aromatic imines were not suitable substrates for this catalyst, giving products in low optical purities (<10-32% ee). The a-amino nitrile product of benzaldehyde was converted to the corresponding a-amino acid in high yield (92%) and ee (>99%) via a one-step acid hydrolysis. 

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