Enamine catalysis activation

The Catalysis Concept of Enamine Activation Enamine catalysis is one of the most thoroughly investigated research areas within organocatalysis. The... 

Abstract The reversible reaction of primary or secondary amines with enolizable aldehydes or ketones affords nncleophilic intermediates, enamines. With chiral amines, catalytic enantioselective reactions via enamine intermediates become possible. In this review, structure-activity relationships and the scope as well as cnrrent limitations of enamine catalysis are discnssed. 

As a catalytic concept, asymmetric enamine catalysis has been the subject of several recent reviews [8-23], In this concept review, we will focus on some of the key aspects of this mode of activation, and probe the current limitations and possible future directions of enamine catalysis. 

In enantioselective enamine catalysis, the enamine can control the approach of the electrophile either by the steric bulk of the enamine or by directing the electrophile with an activating group. As can be readily observed with relatively unreactive electrophiles, such as aldehydes, ketones or imines, additional assistance for catalysis can be provided by suitably positioned hydrogen bond donors and/or other acids (Scheme 6) [46]. 

Barbas, one of the pioneers of enamine catalysis, has incorporated iminium ion intermediates in complex heterodomino reactions. One particularly revealing example that uses the complementary activity of both iminium ion and enamine intermediates is shown in Fig. 12 [188]. Within this intricate catalytic cycle the catalyst, L-proline (58), is actively involved in accelerating two iminium ion catalysed transformations a Knoevenagel condensation and a retro-Michael/Michael addition sequence, resulting in epimerisation. 

Cascade Catalysis Merging Iminium (lm) and Enamine (En) Activations... 

Chen and coworkers have reported a new domino Michael-Michael addition reaction between a,a-dicyanoalkene [26] derived from cyclohexanone and benzyli-deneacetone, resulting in a stepwise [4 + 2]-type cycloaddition to afford almost enantiopure bicyclic adduct 15. In contrast to the completely inert function of secondary ammonium salt, a primary amine, 9-amino-9-deoxyepiquinine lo [27], in combination with trifluoroacetic acid, was found to be highly efficient in the activation of the a, 3-unsaturated ketone by tandem iminium-enamine catalysis (Scheme 10.21) [28],... 

Type I aldolases activate the aldol donor by the formation of enamines with active site amino acids and an alternate approach to the direct catalytic asymmetric aldol reaction centres on mimicking this process using proline-based organocatalysts. In fact, one of the earliest examples of asymmetric catalysis uses (S)-profine (7.66) as a catalyst for the intramolecular aldol reaction (the Hajos-Eder-Saeur-Wiechert reaction).As an example the achiral triketone (7.67) cyclises to give the aldol product (7.68) with good enantioselectivity. 

The enamine catalysis detailed above proceeds via activation of the Mannich donor. An alternate strategy to the catalysis of the Mannich reaction is by the use of Brensted acids that activate the acceptor imine by protonation on nitrogen. Some of the most successful asymmetric variants of this process use BINOL-based phosphoric acids as catalysts. For instance Terada and coworkers used (7.144) to effect highly enantioselective addition of acetylacetone to a range of aryl aldimines ... 

With respect to the covalent activation in conjugate additions, the catalyst, usually a primary or a secondary amine, can reversibly form a chiral enamine [ 11 ] to activate the nucleophile (D, Fig. 2.2) or a chiral iminium ion [12] to activate the acceptor (E, Fig. 2.2). The detection of enamine intermediates in asymmetric oiganocatalysis has been for a long time the missing piece of evidence for the commonly accepted mechanism of enamine catalysis. This gap has been recently solved with the first detection and structnral characterization of enamine intermediates in proUne-cata-lyzed aldol reactions by real-time NMR spectroscopy [13] and the direct observation of an enamine intermediate in the crystal strnctnre of an aldolase antibody [14]. 

A wide variety of carbon nucleophiles have been successfully used in the organocatalytic asymmetric inter- and intramolecular Michael addition to different a,p-unsaturated systems. Among them, the addition of aldehydes to diverse Michael acceptors such as, a,p-unsaturated ketones, alkylidene malonates, P-nitrostyrenes, and vinyl sulfones, is one of the most studied reactions. Enamine catalysis is the most frequently employed chiral activation found in the literature. 

Kokotos and coworkers investigated the use of prolinamide-based thioureas as bifunctional organocatalysts for the direct aldol reaction. The amide and the thiourea functionalities, tethered by a chiral diamine motif, offered multiple hydrogen bonding sites for electrophile activation, while the pyrrolidine skeleton served to activate the nucleophile via enamine catalysis. Thiourea 61 proved to provide the best catalyst in the presence of 4-nitrobenzoic acid as cocatalyst at low temperature and delivered the anti-aXAoX products in moderate to high yields and in high to excellent... 

Iminium Catalysis. Together with enamine catalysis, iminium catalysis is the most prominent activation mode in asymmetric aminocatalysis [61]. Initial work was carried out on cycloadditions [10, 62], but it was rapidly extended to... 

Sequential Iminium-Enamine Catalysis. Directed Electrostatic Activation. A comparison of the standard catalytic cycles for enamine activation (Scheme 2.1) and for iminium ion activation (Scheme 2.12) show that iminium catalysis proceeds, after the addition of the nucleophile, via an ( )-enamine. In the presence of a suitable electrophile, this enamine gives rise to an iminium ion that after hydrolysis can give rise to an a,p-diftmctionalyzed carbonyl (Scheme 2.13) [85]. Scheme 2.13 also shows that when using a chiral 2-substituted pyrrohdine or an imidazolidinone as the catalyst, the sequential apphcation of the steric model for Michael addition to iminium ions (Figure 2.15) and of the steric model for electrophilic attack to enamines (Figure 2.IB) predicts the absolute stereochemistry of the major isomer obtained in the reaction. 

The mechanism of enamine catalysis has been established the enamine is the active form of nucleophile. Other modes of activation are less developed and are limited to a certain group of donors and acceptors. Quinidine was found to catalyze the reaction of hydroxyacetone with aldehydes to yield the desired 5y -aldols with moderate diastereoselectivity and low enantioselectivity [169]. This represents the first example of a tertiary amine catalyzing the direct aldol reaction. Even (3, y-unsaturated a-keto ester 154 was successfidly coupled with protected hydroxyacetone 51 in the presence of 20 mol% of 9-amino-9-deoxy-cpi-cinchonine 155 and a small amount of TEA (Scheme 3.27). 

In terms of modem organocatalysis, the publications of MacMillan et al. and List et al. in 2000 set the stage for two of the most important activation mechanisms employed in organocatalysis today iminium catalysis (27) and enamine catalysis (28). While MacMillan and co-workers used the chiral imidazolium salt 8 to... 

When summing up the recent achievements in iminium-activated natural product synthesis, the importance and versatility of this methodology cannot be overemphasized. Besides enamine catalysis, it is due particularly to the considerable achievements made in iminium catalysis that asymmetric organocatalysis has received so much attention over the last few years. As depicted in this chapter, the LUMO-lowering concept originally introduced by MacMillan has found widespread applications in natural product synthesis. In addition, it has been shown, that this activation mode works very well in cascade approaches. This methodology should become more widely utilized in the future (Table 2). 

It has been discussed in Sect. 2.6 that the combination of different organocatalytic activation modes for the efficient and short syntheses of complex structural moieties has attracted considerable interest over the last few years (30, 32, 176-178). As depicted in Schemes 48 and 49, the use of different enamine-catalysis based stereoselective transformations has given access to such highly functionalized and complex natural products like brasoside (198), littoraUsone (199) (115), and caUipeltoside C (206) (184), in an elegant and highly efficient way. 

The main focus in this chapter will be on combined approaches using enamine catalysis and iminium catalysis especially in one-pot cascade reactions. As discussed in the following examples, the combined use of these two activation modes has led to the development of some of the most impressive and efficient organocatalytic natural product syntheses conducted so far (301-305). 

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