Chiral 3-hydroxy acid production

In the full-scale production of the chiral hydroxy acid, a continuous membrane reactor with a volume of 2.2 L was used to meet the time line for product delivery. Under the optimum conditions, a substrate solution with pH = 6.3 was fed into the reactor at a rate of 12.0 mL/min resulting in a residence time of about 3 hours. The average conversion was maintained above 90%. Upon work-up, the desired product was obtained in a yield of up to 88% with ee values >99.9%. Using this process, a total of 14.5 kg of the desired chiral 2-hydroxy acid 1 was prepared within a period of four weeks with a productivity of ca. 560 g/L/d (grams per liter per day). The cost of goods of the current process is significantly lower than that of the diazotization route. 

New modifiers have traditionally been discovered by the trial-and-error method. Many naturally occurring chiral compounds (the chiral pool38) have been screened as possible modifiers. Thus, the hydrogenation product of the synthetic drug vinpocetine was discovered to be a moderately effective modifier of Pt and Pd for the enantioselective hydrogenation of ethyl pyruvate and isophorone.39 Likewise, ephedrine, emetine, strychnine, brucine, sparteine, various amino acids and hydroxy acids, have been identified as chiral modifiers of heterogeneous catalysts.38... 

At that time, as now, the enantiomers of many chiral amines were obtained as natural products or by synthesis from naturally occurring amines, a-amino acids and alkaloids, while others were only prepared by introduction of an amino group by appropriate reactions into substances from the chiral pool carbohydrates, hydroxy acids, terpenes and alkaloids. In this connection, a recent review10 outlines the preparation of chiral aziridines from enantiomerically pure starting materials from natural or synthetic sources and the use of these aziridines in stereoselective transformations. Another report11 gives the use of the enantiomers of the a-amino acid esters for the asymmetric synthesis of nitrogen heterocyclic compounds. 

A closely related reaction of ketones and ketoesters with chiral f-butyl (+)-(i )-p-toluenesulfinylacetate 50 was utilized for the synthesis of chiral (3-hydroxy acids as shown in Scheme 32 (317). The optical purities of the final reaction products varied from 8.5 to 91%. 

A very simple chiral Lewis acid, prepared by mixing optically pure BINOL with 3 equiv of Me3Al, catalyzes the [4+2] cycloaddition of A-hydroxy-A-phenylacry-lamine with cyclopentadiene at 0°C in high yield (>96%) and a fairly good level of enantioselectivity (91% ee). Facile conversion of the products to the corresponding alcohols or aldehydes makes the hydroxamic acid intermediates particularly useful (Scheme 12.14). ... 

Despite its efficiency in numerous cases optical resolution is by no means a trivial operation. In each case the optimum method has to be found by laborious trial and error procedures the optical purity of the material has to be secured and its absolute configuration has to be established before the compound can be used in a synthetic sequence. These drawbacks of optical resolution led chemists to start their syntheses from optically active natural products (the so-called chiral carbon pool ). A variety of suitable ex-chiral-pool compounds including carbohydrates, amino acids, hydroxy acids, and terpenoids are shown. 

The direction of enantio-differentiation (the predominant enantiomer R or S, to be produced) is decided by two factors. One factor is the configuration of the chiral structure, that is, if the catalyst modified with (S)-glutamic acid [(S)-Glu-MRNi] produces (R)-MHB from MAA, then (R)-Glu-MRNi produces (S)-MHB (2). The other factor is the nature of X. That is, when the amino acid or hydroxy acid with the same configuration is used as the modifying reagent, the configurations of the predominant products are enantiomers of each other in most cases. For example, (S)-aspartic acid-MRNi produces (R)-MHB and (S)-malic acid-MRNi produces (S)-MHB (19). 

When Michael additions of chiral enolates to nitroalkenes were studied, it was found that lithium enolates (132) of l,3-dioxolan-4-ones (131), derived from the corresponding a-hydroxy acids, afford the adducts (133) with high diastereoselectivity (Scheme 50).144 Recrystallization leads, in general, to diastereomerically pure products, which in turn can efficiently be converted to homochiral compounds like (134), (135) or (136). A number of other chiral enolates (137M140) were also shown to undergo highly selective additions to nitroalkenes however, product configurations were not determined in these cases. 

Chlorophenyl)glutarate monoethyl ester 87 was reduced to hydroxy acid and subsequently cyclized to afford lactone 88. This was further submitted to reduction with diisobutylaluminium hydride to provide lactol followed by Homer-Emmons reaction, which resulted in the formation of hydroxy ester product 89 in good yield. The alcohol was protected as silyl ether and the double bond in 89 was reduced with magnesium powder in methanol to provide methyl ester 90. The hydrolysis to the acid and condensation of the acid chloride with Evans s chiral auxiliary provided product 91, which was further converted to titanium enolate on reaction with TiCI. This was submitted to enolate-imine condensation in the presence of amine to afford 92. The silylation of the 92 with N, O-bis(trimethylsilyl) acetamide followed by treatment with tetrabutylammonium fluoride resulted in cyclization to form the azetidin-2-one ring and subsequently hydrolysis provided 93. This product was converted to bromide analog, which on treatment with LDA underwent intramolecular cyclization to afford the cholesterol absorption inhibitor spiro-(3-lactam (+)-SCH 54016 94. 

Kinetic resolution of chiral, racemic anhydrides In this process the racemic mixture of a chiral anhydride is exposed to the alcohol nucleophile in the presence of a chiral catalyst such as A (Scheme 13.2, middle). Under these conditions, one substrate enantiomer is converted to a mono-ester whereas the other remains unchanged. Application of catalyst B (usually the enantiomer or a pseudo-enantiomer of A) results in transformation/non-transformation of the enantiomeric starting anhydride ). As usual for kinetic resolution, substrate conversion/product yield(s) are intrinsically limited to a maximum of 50%. For normal anhydrides (X = CR2), both carbonyl groups can engage in ester formation, and the product formulas in Scheme 13.1 are drawn arbitrarily. This section also covers the catalytic asymmetric alcoholysis of a-hydroxy acid O-carboxy anhydrides (X = O) and of a-amino acid N-carboxy anhydrides (X = NR). In these reactions the electrophilicity of the carbonyl groups flanking X is reduced and regioselective attack of the alcohol nucleophile on the other carbonyl function results. 

Ojima, 1., Process for the Production of Chiral Hydroxy-P-Lactams and Hydroxyamino Acids Derived Therefrom, U.S. Patent, 1994, 5,294,737. 

Ghosh also took advantage of the C—2 hydroxyl moiety of aminoindanols as a handle in the aldol reaction. Chiral sulfonamide 41 was O-acylated to give ester 42. The titanium enolate of ester 42 was formed as a single isomer and added to a solution of aldehyde, precomplexed with titanium tetrachloride, to yield the anft -aldol product 43 in excellent diastereoselectivities.63 One additional advantage of the ester-derived chiral auxiliaries was their ease of removal under mild conditions. Thus, hydrolysis of 43 afforded a ft -a-methyl- 3-hydroxy acid 44 as a pure enantiomer and cis-1-/ -1 o I y I s u I f on a m i do- 2 - i n da n ol was recovered without loss of optical purity (Scheme 24.7).63... 

Ot-Hydroxy Acid and Epoxide as Building Blocks. Deamination of an a-amino acid with nitrous acid is known to give the corresponding a-hydroxy acid with retention of configuration. An a-hydroxy acid can be converted to an epoxide. Both a-hydroxy acids and epoxides are versatile chiral building blocks in natural products syntheses (3). Alcohol as a Chiral Building Block... 

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