Enantioselective optimization

Oxidation of chroman-4-one and its thio analogue with Mn(OAc)3 gives the 3-acetates and subsequent basic hydrolysis yields the 3-hydroxychroman-4-one. Enzymatic hydrolysis of the 0-heterocycle using Amano PS lipase in a phosphate buffer selectively cleaved the (+)-isomer <03TA1489>. Enol ethers derived from chroman-4-one are converted into the 3-hydroxy-chromanone with high enantioselectivity, optimal with the pentyl ether, using a modified Sharpless asymmetric dihydroxylation reaction <03JOC8088>. 

Zeng, L. et al., Parallel supercritical fluid chromatography/mass spectrometry system for high-throughput enantioselective optimization and separation, J. Chromatogr. A, 1169(1-2), 193,2007. 

The reaction has to be carried out in the absence of oxygen and water, otherwise the intermediately formed nucleophilic carbene is oxidized to the tria-zolinone or suffers hydrolysis with subsequent aminal-type ring opening. Attempts to apply catalyst 7 to the synthesis of aliphatic acyloins gave very low yields and low enantioselectivities. Optimization of the catalyst structure with regard to activity and enantioselectivity yielded triazolium salt 8 as the best-suited system for the condensation of aliphatic aldehydes (Scheme 5) [37]. However, the enantiomeric excesses obtained, only up to 26%, and the rather low total turnover numbers, ranging from 4 to 8, are modest and a search for new, more active catalyst systems is highly desirable. 

The first asymmetric Mn(salen)-catalyzed epoxidation of silyl enol ethers was carried out by Reddy and Thornton in 1992. Results from the epoxidation of various silyl enol ethers gave the corresponding keto-alcohols in up to 62% ee Subsequently, Adam and Katsuki " independently optimized the protocol for these substrates yielding products in excellent enantioselectivity. 

For a reaction as complex as catalytic enantioselective cyclopropanation with zinc carbenoids, there are many experimental variables that influence the rate, yield and selectivity of the process. From an empirical point of view, it is important to identify the optimal combination of variables that affords the best results. From a mechanistic point of view, a great deal of valuable information can be gleaned from the response of a complex reaction system to changes in, inter alia, stoichiometry, addition order, solvent, temperature etc. Each of these features provides some insight into how the reagents and substrates interact with the catalyst or even what is the true nature of the catalytic species. 

As shown above, it was not so easy to optimize the Michael addition reactions of l-crotonoyl-3,5-dimethylpyrazole in the presence of the l ,J -DBFOX/ Ph-Ni(C104)2 3H20 catalyst because a simple tendency of influence to enantio-selectivity is lacking. Therefore, we changed the acceptor to 3-crotonoyl-2-oxazolidi-none in the reactions of malononitrile in dichloromethane in the presence of the nickel(II) aqua complex (10 mol%) (Scheme 7.49). For the Michael additions using the oxazolidinone acceptor, dichloromethane was better solvent than THF and the enantioselectivities were rather independent upon the reaction temperatures and Lewis base catalysts. Chemical yields were also satisfactory. 

The purification of value-added pharmaceuticals in the past required multiple chromatographic steps for batch purification processes. The design and optimization of these processes were often cumbersome and the operations were fundamentally complex. Individual batch processes requires optimization between chromatographic efficiency and enantioselectivity, which results in major economic ramifications. An additional problem was the extremely short time for development of the purification process. Commercial constraints demand that the time interval between non-optimized laboratory bench purification and the first process-scale production for clinical trials are kept to a minimum. Therefore, rapid process design and optimization methods based on computer aided simulation of an SMB process will assist at this stage. 

Temperature can also be used to optimize enantioselectivity in SFC. The selectivity of most CSPs increases as temperature decreases. For this reason, most chiral separations in SFC are performed at ambient or subambient temperatures [50, 74]. Subambient temperatures are particularly useful for compounds having low conformational stability [75]. Stringham and Blackwell explored the concept of entropically driven separations [76]. As temperature increased, enantioselectivity decreased until the enantiomers co-eluted at the isoelution temperature. Further increases in temperature resulted in reversal of elution order of the enantiomers. The temperature limitations of the CSP should be considered before working at elevated temperatures. 

Ten years after Sharpless s discovery of the asymmetric epoxidation of allylic alcohols, Jacobsen and Katsuki independently reported asymmetric epoxidations of unfunctionalized olefins by use of chiral Mn-salen catalysts such as 9 (Scheme 9.3) [14, 15]. The reaction works best on (Z)-disubstituted alkenes, although several tri-and tetrasubstituted olefins have been successfully epoxidized [16]. The reaction often requires ligand optimization for each substrate for high enantioselectivity to be achieved. 

Biocatalysts usually require mild reaction conditions for an optimal activity (physiologic temperature and pH) and, in general, they show high activity, chemo- and enantioselectivity. Furthermore, when using enzymes, many functional group protections and/or activations can be avoided, allowing shorter synthetic transformations. The use of enzymes is therefore very attractive from an environmental and economic point of view. 

The enantioselective 1,4-addition addition of organometaUic reagents to a,p-unsaturated carbonyl compounds, the so-called Michael reaction, provides a powerful method for the synthesis of optically active compounds by carbon-carbon bond formation [129]. Therefore, symmetrical and unsymmetrical MiniPHOS phosphines were used for in situ preparation of copper-catalysts, and employed in an optimization study on Cu(I)-catalyzed Michael reactions of di-ethylzinc to a, -unsaturated ketones (Scheme 31) [29,30]. In most cases, complete conversion and good enantioselectivity were obtained and no 1,2-addition product was detected, showing complete regioselectivity. Of interest, the enantioselectivity observed using Cu(I) directly in place of Cu(II) allowed enhanced enantioselectivity, implying that the chiral environment of the Cu(I) complex produced by in situ reduction of Cu(II) may be less selective than the one with preformed Cu(I). 

A polymer-supported version of our optimal ligand was also developed [52]. Its preparation involves attachment of aziridine carbinols to polymer-bound triphenylchloromethane (Scheme 40). This polymer-bound ligand 53 was almost equally effective in the enantioselective addition of diethylzinc to aromatic and aliphatic aldehydes with ee s ranging from 77-97% for the latter type of substrate [52]. It is of practical interest that this polymer-supported ligand could be reused without losing much of its efficiency. 

The couphng of N-substituted benzaldimines, mediated by the zinc-copper couple in the presence of (+)-camphorsulfonic acid (CSA) in DMF, was investigated. The best results were obtained for the imine 22, and the optimal balance of yield, diastereoselectivity and enantioselectivity for the diamine 23 was obtained using 3equiv of (+)-CSA [17] (Schemes). How-... 

Suga and Ibata [44] prepared binaphtyldiimine derivatives 36 (Scheme 19) affording 98% ee as best selectivity for the transformation of 1,1-diphenyl-ethylene with Z-menthyl diazoacetate. The authors performed PM3 calculations and proposed an optimized structure of the copper complex to explain the high enantioselectivity observed with 1,1-disubstituted olefins. 

More recently, the same type of hgand was used to form chiral iridium complexes, which were used as catalysts in the hydrogenation of ketones. The inclusion of hydrophihc substituents in the aromatic rings of the diphenylethylenediamine (Fig. 23) allowed the use of the corresponding complexes in water or water/alcohol solutions [72]. This method was optimized in order to recover and reuse the aqueous solution of the catalyst after product extraction with pentane. The combination of chiral 1,2-bis(p-methoxyphenyl)-N,M -dimethylethylenediamine and triethyleneglycol monomethyl ether in methanol/water was shown to be the best method, with up to six runs with total acetophenone conversion and 65-68% ee. Only in the seventh run did the yield and the enantioselectivity decrease slightly. 

Chitosan (Fig. 27) was deposited on sihca by precipitation. The palladium complex was shown to promote the enantioselective hydrogenation of ketones [80] with the results being highly dependent on the structure of the substrate. In the case of aromatic ketones, both yield and enantioselectiv-ity depend on the N/Pd molar ratio. Low palladium contents favored enan-tioselectivity but reduced the yield. Very high conversions were obtained with aliphatic ketones, although with modest enantioselectivities. More recently, the immobilized chitosan-Co complex was described as a catalyst for the enantioselective hydration of 1-octene [81]. Under optimal conditions, namely Co content 0.5 mmolg and 1-octene/Co molar ratio of 50, a 98% yield and 98% ee were obtained and the catalyst was reused five times without loss of activity or enantioselectivity. 

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