Chiral cinchona-PTCs

A caution has been noted for chiral PTC alkylations involving alkyl halides that can be easily reduced. Attempted alkylation of 35 with (bromomethyl)cyclooctatetraene with a chiral cinchona-derived catalyst gave only racemic product [20]. 

As (—)-cinchonidine-derived ammonium salts have been mainly used as chiral PTCs in monomeric cinchona-PTCs via the asymmetric alkylation of 1, and have generally shown better results than those of others [e.g., derived from (+)-cinchonine, (—(-quinine, and (+)-quinidine], the Park-Jew group primarily prepared (—) -cinchonidine derivatives to identify both the optimal linker and best relationship of attachment for the two cinchona units, and to compare catalytic efficiency with that of monomeric cinchona-PTCs. 

By screening solvent and inorganic bases to establish the optimal reaction conditions for dimeric chiral PTCs, a toluenexhloroform (7 3, v/v) solvent system and a 50% aqueous KOH base were found to afford the best enantioselectivity and chemical yield within a reasonable reaction time. As dimeric cinchona-PTCs are very poorly soluble in toluene (one of the popular solvents in asymmetric alkylation), this might act as an obstacle for the catalyst to show its maximum ability. However, the addition of chloroform to toluene provided better results due to an improved solubility of the dimeric PTC. This difference in ability to dissolve the dimeric PTC might be heavily associated not only with the reaction rate but also with the chemical/ optical yield. However, the use of chloroform alone proved to be inadequate as an optimal solvent [10]. 

With these anthracene-linked dimeric cinchona-PTCs, the Najera group investigated the counterion effect in asymmetric alkylation of 1 by exchanging the classical chloride or bromide anion with tetrafluoroborate (BF4 ) or hexafluorophosphate (PF6-) anions (Scheme 4.10) [17]. They anticipated that both tetrafluoroborate and hexafluorophosphate could form less-tight ionic pairs than chloride or bromide, thus allowing a more easy and rapid complexation of the chiral ammonium cation with the enolate of 1, and therefore driving to a higher enantioselectivity. However, when... 

The Merck group s report has undoubtedly sparked the development of efficient catalytic organic reaction systems using structurally well-defined chiral organocata-lysts. Cinchona alkaloids have taken the lead in this research area, and, as a matter of course, a variety of cinchona PTCs have been newly developed and applied to diverse... 

General principles applied on the design of chiral cinchona alkaloid-based chiral ammonium salt PTC catalysts. 

Very recently, the same researchers also discovered the potential of variation at the CS-vinyl moiety of the Cinchona alkaloid and performed Mizoroki-Heck coupling reactions between the Cinchona alkaloid-derived dimer and di-iodide, affording the chiral polymer PTC 14d (henzylation, 95% enantiomeric excess). The insolubility of the polymer makes it possible to recover the catalyst from the reaction mixture and recycle it several times without a decrease in the chemical yield or enantioselectivity (Scheme 16.9). ... 

Mannich Reaction Carbamate-protected alkyl imines are important building blocks in the synthesis of chiral alkyl amines. However, they are usually unstable, and most of them cannot be prepared in pure form. As the optimal substitutes, a-amido sulfones 142 were first used in the PTC-catalyzed enantioselective aza-Henry reaction in 2005 [57]. Subsequently, Song et al. reported a chiral Cinchona alkaloid thiourea (130b)-catalyzed Mannich reaction with in situ generation of... 

Aldol and Related Condensations As an elegant extension of the PTC-alkylation reaction, quaternary ammonium catalysts have been efficiently utilized in asymmetric aldol (Scheme 11.17a)" and nitroaldol reactions (Scheme ll.lTb) for the constmction of optically active p-hydroxy-a-amino acids. In most cases, Mukaiyama-aldol-type reactions were performed, in which the coupling of sUyl enol ethers with aldehydes was catalyzed by chiral ammonium fluoride salts, thus avoiding the need of additional bases, and allowing the reaction to be performed under homogeneous conditions. " It is important to note that salts derived from cinchona alkaloids provided preferentially iyw-diastereomers, while Maruoka s catalysts afforded awh-diastereomers. 

The epoxidation of enones using chiral phase transfer catalysis (PTC) is an emerging technology that does not use transition metal catalysts. Lygo and To described the use of anthracenylmethyl derivatives of a cinchona alkaloid that are capable of catalyzing the epoxidation of enones with remarkable levels of asymmetric control and a one pot method for oxidation of the aUyl alcohol directly into... 

Catalysts (3 and 6) derived from the cinchona alkaloids (Chart 10.1) [83] have been utilized extensively in chiral PTC because the parent alkaloids (1—4) are inexpensive, readily available in both pseudoenantiomeric forms [84], and can be easily quatemarized to a variety of different salts. 

In particular, it is not only the cinchona alkaloids that are suitable chiral sources for asymmetric organocatalysis [6], but also the corresponding ammonium salts. Indeed, the latter are particularly useful for chiral PTCs because (1) both pseudo enantiomers of the starting amines are inexpensive and available commercially (2) various quaternary ammonium salts can be easily prepared by the use of alkyl halides in a single step and (3) the olefin and hydroxyl functions are beneficial for further modification of the catalyst. In this chapter, the details of recent progress on asymmetric phase-transfer catalysis are described, with special focus on cinchona-derived ammonium salts, except for asymmetric alkylation in a-amino acid synthesis. 

Cinchona alkaloids, of course, have occupied the central position in the design of chiral PTCs. By employing a simple chemical transformation of the tertiary amine ofthe natural cinchona alkaloids to the corresponding quaternary ammonium salts, using active halides (e.g., aryl-methyl halides), a basic series of PTCs can be readily prepared. Cinchona alkaloid-derived PTCs have proved their real value in many types of catalytic asymmetric synthesis, including a-alkylation of modified a-amino acids for the synthesis of higher-ordered a-amino acids [2], a-alkylation of... 

Besides the glycinate ester derivatives described above, other types of enolate-forming compounds have proved to be useful substrates for enantioselective alkylation reactions in the presence of cinchona alkaloids as chiral PTC catalysts. The Corey group reported the alkylation of enolizable carboxylic acid esters of type 57 in the presence of 25 as organocatalyst [69]. The alkylations furnished the desired a-substituted carboxylate 58 in yields of up to 83% and enantioselectivity up to 98% ee (Scheme 3.23). It should be added that high enantioselectivity in the range 94-98% ee was obtained with a broad variety of alkyl halides as alkylation agents. The product 58c is a versatile intermediate in the synthesis of an optically active tetra-hydropyran. 

Several families of efficient chiral phase transfer catalysts are now available for use in asymmetric synthesis. To date, the highest enantiomeric excesses (>95% ee) are obtained using salts derived from cinchona alkaloids with a 9-anthracenylmethyl substituent on the bridgehead nitrogen (e.g. lb, 2b). These catalysts will be used to improve the enantiose-lectivity of existing asymmetric PTC reactions and will be exploited in other anion-mediated processes both in the laboratory and industrially. 

Alkylations. Highly enantioselective alkylation of t-butyl 4,4-bis (p-dimethyl-aminophenyl)-3-butenoate and t-butyl A -diphenylmethyleneglycine in the presence of a quatemized cinchona alkaloid results. The salt plays a dual role in asymmetric induction and as a phase-transfer catalyst. The products from the former reaction can be cleaved at the double bond to furnish chiral malonaldehydic esters which have many obvious synthetic applications. A combination of PTC, LiCl, and an organic base (e.g., DBU) favors the enantioselective alkylation of a chiral A-acylimidazolidinone in which the acyl side chain is derived from glycine. ... 

Soon after, the groups of Ricci [35] and Schaus [36] also employed a-amidosulfones as stable imine precursors in cinchona-catalyzed Mannich reactions. Ricci and coworkers reported [35] that, under PTC conditions (toluene/aqueous K2C03) using 75 as a catalyst (1 mol%), both the aliphatic and aromatic a-amido p-tolylsulfones 76 reacted with the malonates to afford the Mannich adducts 77 with high levels of enantioselectivity (85-99% ee) (Scheme 8.25). The subsequent decarboxylation/ transesterification of 77 gave the corresponding [3-amino acid derivatives without any alternation of the optical purities. The chiral dihydropyrimidones 80 were also successfully synthesized by Schaus and coworkers via the cinchonine catalyzed... 

In addition to chiral PTCs, cinchona-based thioureas have also been proved to serve as catalysts for nitro-Mannich reactions. In 2006, Ricci and coworkers first reported that the quinine-based thiourea 40 (20mol%) can catalyze the aza-Henry reaction between nitromethane and the N-protected imines 93 derived from aromatic aldehydes [40]. N-Boc-, N-Cbz-, and N-Fmoc protected imines gave the best results in terms of the chemical yields and enantioselectivities (up to 94% ee at —40°C) (Scheme 8.30). 

The asymmetric alkylation of glycine derivatives is one of the most simple methods by which to obtain optically active a-amino acids [31]. The enantioselective alkylation of glycine Schiff base 52 under phase-transfer catalysis (PTC) conditions and catalyzed by a quaternary cinchona alkaloid, as pioneered by O Donnell [32], allowed impressive degrees of enantioselection to be achieved using only a very simple procedure. Some examples of polymer-supported cinchona alkaloids are shown in Scheme 3.14. Polymer-supported chiral quaternary ammonium salts 48 have been easily prepared from crosslinked chloromethylated polystyrene (Merrifield resin) with an excess of cinchona alkaloid in refluxing toluene [33]. The use of these polymer-supported quaternary ammonium salts allowed high enantioselectivities (up to 90% ee) to be obtained. 

Cinchona alkaloids are by far the chiral fragments most used for the challenge of achieving chiral PTC using insoluble supports. For this purpose, one of the nitrogen atoms of 71, usually the aliphatic one, is quaternized, either by using this atom to anchor the polymeric backbone (92, Scheme 10.17) or by its appropriate... 

Chiral versions of PEG-bound PTCs have been prepared by the attachment of cinchona alkaloids. Catalysts 101 and 102 (Figure 10.9), related to non-cationic 77, were prepared starting from monomethylated PEG5000 and using spacers similar to that of 98 [216]. Both materials were tested as catalysts for the synthesis of the tert-butyl ester related to 94 and similar compounds, using the standard O Donnell-Corey-Lygo procedure. Under optimized conditions (DCM, solid CsOH, — 78 °C,... 

The synthesis of the chiral copper catalyst is very easy to reproduce. The complex catalyses the asymmetric alkylation of enolates of a range of amino acids, thus allowing the synthesis of enantiomeric ally enriched a,a disubstituted amino acids with up to 92% ee. The procedure combines the synthetic simplicity of the Phase Transfer Catalyst (PTC) approach, with the advantages of catalysis by metal complexes. The chemistry is compatible with the use of methyl ester substrates, thus avoiding the use of iso-propyl or ferf-butyl esters which are needed for cinchona-alkaloid catalyzed reactions[4], where the steric bulk of the ester is important for efficient asymmetric induction. Another advantage compared with cinchona-alkaloid systems is that copper(II)(chsalen) catalyses the alkylation of substrates derived from a range of amino acids, not just glycine and alanine (Table 2.4). 

Despite the great impact of PTC in organic synthesis since its discovery, catalytic asymmetric synthesis using chiral phase transfer catalysts has been poorly investigated for quite a long time, but has taken a fast growing pace in the last few years [58,59]. Only isolated examples [60] of asymmetric PTC appeared in the literature until O Donnell in 1989 reported the enantioselective PTC alkylation of the benzophenoneimine of glycine derivatives catalyzed by Cinchona alkaloid-derived ammonium salts (Scheme 14) [61]. 

Excellent results were also reported recently by Maruoka and coworkers by using 50% aqueous NaOH in toluene and a (5)-BINAP-derived C2-symmetric ammonium catalyst 14 [64]. The steric and/or electronic properties of this new class of catalysts can be finely tuned in order to improve reactivity and enantioselectivity. The N-spiro structure along with their high lipophilicity make such catalysts much more reactive than the traditional PTC catalysts, e.g., Bu4N+Br, in otherwise identical conditions [65]. Excellent ees are usually obtained in short reaction times with 1 % of catalyst only moreover, they should be more stable under basic conditions than ammonium salt derived from Cinchona alkaloids since they do not undergo Hofmann elimination resulting from lack of yS-hydrogens. However, they are not as easily prepared as Cinchona ammonium catalysts and are expected to be quite expensive since they are not derived from the chiral pool. On... 

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