Chiral building block

Chiral Building Blocks, technical brochure, Lonza AG, Basel, Switzerland, 1991. 

Cyclitols as novel chiral building blocks in synthesis of heterocyclic natural products 97CC807. 

This catalyst was successfully applied to the Diels-Alder reaction of propargyl aldehydes as dienophUes [12] (Scheme 1.21, Table 1.8). Though 2-hutyn-l-al and 2-oc-tyn-l-al are unreactive dienophUes, silyl- and stannyl-suhstituted a,/ -acetylenic aldehydes react with cydopentadiene readily in the presence of 20 mol% of the catalyst at low temperature to give hicyclo[2.2.1]heptadiene derivatives in high optical purity these derivatives are synthetically useful chiral building blocks. 

The reaction has wide scope in respect of the dienophUe / -substituent. The representative less reactive dienophiles, crotonoyl- and cinnamoyl-oxazolidinone, react with cyclopentadiene at -15 °C and 25 °C for 20 h and 24 h giving cycloadducts in 99% ee and 96% ee, respectively. The 3-chloropropenoyl derivative also affords the adduct in high optical purity (96% ee) this adduct is transformed to 2-(methoxycar-bonyl)norbornadiene, a useful chiral building block. Thus, the 3-chloropropenoyl derivative can be regarded as a synthetic equivalent of an acetylene dienophile. 

The chemistry of aziridine-2-carboxylates and phosphonates has been discussed in part in several reviews covering the literature through 1999 [1-3], This chapter is intended to give an overview of asymmetric syntheses using chiral nonracemic aziridine-2-carboxylates and -phosphonates with particular emphasis on their applications as chiral building blocks in asymmetric synthesis since 2000. Some overlap with earlier reviews is necessary for the sake of continuity. 

Despite of the disadvantage, that at least one symmetrical dimer is formed as a major side product, mixed Kolbe electrolysis has turned out to be a powerful synthetic method. It enables the efficient synthesis of rare fatty acids, pheromones, chiral building blocks or non proteinogenic amino acids. The starting compounds are either accessible from the large pool of fatty acids or can be easily prepared via the potent methodologies for the construction of carboxylic acids. 

Hydroxy-L-prolin is converted into a 2-methoxypyrrolidine. This can be used as a valuable chiral building block to prepare optically active 2-substituted pyrrolidines (2-allyl, 2-cyano, 2-phosphono) with different nucleophiles and employing TiQ as Lewis acid (Eq. 21) [286]. Using these latent A -acylimmonium cations (Eq. 22) [287] (Table 9, No. 31), 2-(pyrimidin-l-yl)-2-amino acids [288], and 5-fluorouracil derivatives [289] have been prepared. For the synthesis of p-lactams a 4-acetoxyazetidinone, prepared by non-Kolbe electrolysis of the corresponding 4-carboxy derivative (Eq. 23) [290], proved to be a valuable intermediate. 0-Benzoylated a-hydroxyacetic acids are decarboxylated in methanol to mixed acylals [291]. By reaction of the intermediate cation, with the carboxylic acid used as precursor, esters are obtained in acetonitrile (Eq. 24) [292] and surprisingly also in methanol as solvent (Table 9, No. 32). Hydroxy compounds are formed by decarboxylation in water or in dimethyl sulfoxide (Table 9, Nos. 34, 35). 

The cationic pathway allows the conversion of carboxylic acids into ethers, acetals or amides. From a-aminoacids versatile chiral building blocks are accessible. The eliminative decarboxylation of vicinal diacids or P-silyl carboxylic acids, combined with cycloaddition reactions, allows the efficient construction of cyclobutenes or cyclohexadienes. The induction of cationic rearrangements or fragmentations is a potent way to specifically substituted cyclopentanoids and ring extensions by one-or four carbons. In view of these favorable qualities of Kolbe electrolysis, numerous useful applications of this old reaction can be expected in the future. 

Figure 10.44 RibA catalyzed sequential aldol additions yielding a key chiral building block for cholesterol-lowering drugs.

Even if hundreds of chiral catalysts have been developed to promote the enantioselective addition of alkylzinc reagents to aldehydes with enantioselectivities over 90% ee, the addition of organozinc reagents to aldehydes is not a solved problem. For example, only very few studies on the addition of vinyl groups or acetylides and even arylzinc reagents to aldehydes have been published, in spite of the fact that the products of these reactions, chiral allylic, propargylic and aryl alcohols, are valuable chiral building blocks. 

Diastereoselective allylation under aqueous Barbier conditions of a-amino aldehydes with the chiral building block (Ss)-3-chloro-2-(p-tolylsulfinyl)-l-propene to give enantiomerically pure sulfinyl amino alcohols in good yields and with high diastereoselectivity was reported (Eq. 8.34).73... 

Dendrimers Containing Synthetic Chiral Building Blocks.140... 

Because of their high molecular weight and their defined structure, dendrimers offer themselves for studying the expression of chirality on a macromolecular level. The construction of configurationally uniform macromolecules is otherwise a complex task but can be achieved more easily with dendrimers because of repetitive synthesis from identical (chiral) building blocks. Comparison of optical rotation values and circular dichroism (CD) spectra should demonstrate what influence there is of the chiral building blocks on the structure of the whole dendrimer. 

The stereogenic centers of chiral dendrimers synthesized so far are either generated by asymmetric synthesis, or they are derived from molecules of the pool of chiral building blocks. The only investigation on chiral dendrimers, consisting of achiral building blocks exclusively, was published by Meijer et al., who synthesized dendrimers such as 31 [61] (Fig. 14). This compound ows its chiral-... 

Fig. 20. Enantiopure chiral building blocks 54-56 and intermediates 52 and 53 obtained from 3-(.R)-hydroxy-butanoate [1,83-88]... 

At the beginning of investigations on chiral dendrimers in our own group was the question of how to synthesize chiral, non-racemic derivatives of tris(hydroxymethyl)-methane [82], which we wanted to use as dendrimer center pieces. We have developed efficient diastereoselective syntheses of such triols [83-85] from ( R)-3-hydroxybutanoic acid, readily available from the biopolymer PHB [59,60] (cf. Sect. 2.4). To this end, the acid is converted to the dioxanone 52 [86, 87], from which various alkylation products and different aldol adducts of type 53 were obtained selectively, via the enolate (Fig. 20). These compounds have been reduced to give a variety of enantiopure chiral building blocks for dendrimers, such as the core unit 54, triply branching units 55a and 55b or doubly branching unit 56 [1,88]. 

Scheme 2.104. A concise route to (+)-18-Keto-pseudoyohimbane (2-451) using bicyclo[3.2.1]octane 2-437 as chiral building block.

The reduction of nitro ketones with baker s yeast is a good method for the preparation of chiral nitro alcohols.89 The reduction of 5-nitro-2-pentanone with baker s yeast gives the corresponding (5)-alcohol, which is an important chiral building block. Various chiral natural products are prepared from it. In Scheme 7.16, the synthesis of the pheromone of Andrena haemorrhoa is described, where the acylation of the chiral nitro alcohol followed by radical denitration is involved as key steps.89a... 

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