Chiral Schiff bases, Strecker amino acid

The assymetric Strecker reaction of diverse imines, including aldimines as well as ketoimines, with HCN or TMSCN provides a direct access to various unnatural and natural amino acids in high enantiomeric excesses, using soluble or resin-linked non-metal Schiff bases the corresponding chiral catalysts are obtained and optimized by parallel combinatorial library synthesis [93]. A rather general asymmetric Strecker-type synthesis of various imines and a, 9-unsaturated derivatives is catalyzed by chiral bifunctional Lewis acid-Lewis base aluminum-containing complexes [94]. When chiral (salen)Al(III) complexes are employed for the hydrocyanation of aromatic substituted imines, excellent yields and enatio-selectivities are obtained [94]. 

A pioneer in the field of the asymmetrie (thio)urea organocatalysis was Eric Jacohsen, who first reported a chiral (polymer-hound) Schiff base thiourea derivative for asymmetric Strecker reactions optimised from parallel synthetic libraries/ These catalysts can be used either in solution or immobilised to a polystyrene resin, with the latter retaining efficiency, after repeated recycling/ The key factors responsible for high enantioselectivities were the presence of bullqr substituents at both the amino acid position and at the 3-position of the aromatic ring (Scheme 19.3). 

Significant improvements to the procedure were reported by Patel and Worsley in 1970 [102]. They found that preformation of the Schiff base 137 prior to the cyanide addition gave the resulting a-amino acids such as D-leucine (139) in excellent optical purities (> 98% ee) and satisfactory overall yields (40-60%, Scheme 10.22). Numerous alternative strategies incorporating chiral auxiliaries to effect diastereoselective Strecker reactions have subsequently been investigated [21, 22],... 

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