Heteroaromatic bases, alkylation

Homolytic alkylation of homocyclic aromatic substrates is of much less interest than homolytic arylation because, in addition to the low selectivity, which also characterizes arylation, yields are usually poor, due to side reactions which compete seriously with the simple substitution reaction. The behavior of nonprotonated heteroaromatic substrates is similar. The case is quite different with protonated heteroaromatic bases because side reactions are eliminated or minimized, yields are generally good, and, above all, the selectivity is very high. Moreover, very versatile and easily available sources of alkyl radicals can be used under simple experimental condition it follows that homolytic alkylation of protonated heteroaromatic bases can be considered one of the main reactions of this class of compounds. 

O3yhydroperoxides. Peroxides of the oxyhydro type are obtained by the addition of hydrogen peroxide to ketones. High yields of alkyl radicals are then often obtained by reaction with ferrous salts. 1-Meth-oxycyclohexyl hydroperoxide is easily obtained from cyclohexanone and hydrogen peroxide in methanol. It gives rise to the 5-(methoxy-carbonyl)-pentyl radical, which has been used to alkylate protonated heteroaromatic bases in high yield [Eq. (6)]. 

The oxidative decarboxylation of carboxylic acids is the most convenient source for the alkylation of protonated heteroaromatic bases owing to their easy availability and the high versatility of the reaction, which permits methyl, primary, secondary, and tertiary alkyl radicals to be obtained under very simple experimental conditions. The following methods have been utilized. 

Oxidation of tertiary alcohols by lead tetraacetate gives alkyl radicals by /3-scission of the initially formed alkoxy radicals. The reaction has been used to alkylate protonated heteroaromatic bases using 1-methyl-cyclohexanol. (Scheme 4). 

Some oxaziranes can be prepared very simply from ketones and N-chloroamines. Thus 2-methyl-3,3-pentamethyleneoxazirane is easily obtained from cyclohexanone and iV-methylchloramine its reduction by ferrous salts gives an alkyl radical, which has been used to alkylate, in high yield, protonated heteroaromatic bases in aqueous solution (Scheme 5). 

A quite different reaction course was observed with benzoyl peroxide. The increase in the decomposition rate on going from nonprotonated to protonated quinoline is relatively small. The high decomposition rate of decanoyl peroxide in the presence of protonated heteroaromatic bases was mainly ascribed to the nucleophilic character of the alkyl radicals, which allows the complete capture of the nonyl radicals escaping from the solvent cage and the consequently rapid induced decomposition. The... 

The alkylation with alcohols and amines can lead to alkyl derivatives or a-hydroxy and a-aminoalkyl derivatives according to the nature of the heteroaromatic base and the reaction conditions. The intermediate products in both cases are, however, the a-hydroxy and a-aminoalkyl dihydro derivatives, which can be aromatized by disproportionation or oxidation, while the loss of water or ammonia leads to the alkyl derivatives (Scheme 7). 

The homolytic alkylation of protonated heteroaromatic bases is characterized by a very high selectivity (Table II). 

This high sensitivity to polar effects of the homolytic alkylation of protonated heteroaromatic bases has been interpreted in terms of the transition state.This would be similar to a w-complex in which an enhanced contribution of polar forms (5) would explain the high sensitivity to polar influence. 

The homolytic acylation of protonated heteroaromatic bases is, as with alkylation, characterized by high selectivity. Only the positions a and y to the heterocyclic nitrogen are attacked. Attack in the position or in the benzene ring of polynuclear heteroaromatics has never been observed, even after careful GLC analysis of the reaction products. Quinoline is attacked only in positions 2 and 4 the ratio 4-acyl- to 2-acylquinoline was 1.3 with the acetyl radical from acetaldehyde, 1.7 with the acetyl radical from pyruvic acid, and 2.8 with the benzoyl radical from benzaldehyde. 

Also, the results of the substituent effects in homolytic acylation of protonated heteroaromatic bases must be connected, as for homolytic alkylation, with the polar characteristics of the acyl radicals and the aromatic substrates, but not with the stabilization of the intermediate a-complexes. 

The a-oxyalkyl radicals used for alkylating heteroaromatic bases are formed by the oxidation of alcohols and ethers with a variety of electrophilic radicals or photochemically. 

If the mechanism in acid and without acid are the same, one might have expected 4-alkylation under both conditions, and the failure to observe any 4-alkylation when acid is not present is as yet unexplained. Possibly with nonprotonated bases the hydroxyalkylation occurs according to Scheme 11, in which dimerization of two radicals within the solvent cage would lead to attack only at position 2, while in acid the attack could take place, at least in part, according to Scheme 12 but with protonated base, leading to both the isomers (2 and 4), as in the hydroxyalkylation by oxidation of alcohols. The much higher affinity of alkyl radicals toward protonated heteroaromatic bases in comparison with nonprotonated bases would support this interpretation. 

The ethyl radical directly attacks the heteroaromatic base, while the acetaldehyde acts as a source of acetyl radical. Photochemical oxy-alkylation has also been tried with ethers. The reaction has been successfully carried out with pyridines, quinolines, isoquinolines,cinno-lines, and quinoxalines. Particularly good yields were obtained with caffeine (16) (Scheme 14). ... 

The usual sources used for the homolytic aromatic arylation have been utilized also in the heterocyclic series. They are essentially azo- and diazocompounds, aroyl peroxides, and sometimes pyrolysis and photolysis of a variety of aryl derivatives. Most of these radical sources have been described in the previous review concerning this subject, and in other reviews concerning the general aspects of homolytic aromatic arylation. A new source of aryl radicals is the silver-catalyzed decarboxylation of carboxylic acids by peroxydisulfate, which allows to work in aqueous solution of protonated heteroaromatic bases, as for the alkyl radicals. 

These and other homolytic alkylations of neutral heteroaromatics usually proceed in poor yields, but if protonated heteroaromatic bases are used, many of the side reactions are minimized and selectivity is high and yields are good. Selectivity is increased because the alkyl radicals are nucleophilic in character and thus selectively attack the a-position. 

Photochemical decomposition of (diacyloxyiodo)arenes provides a method for decarboxylative alkylation of heteroaromatic bases such as lepidine [Eq. (80)] [141,142]. 

In a convenient experimental procedure, nitrogen heterocycles 3 are alkylated by a mixture of a carboxylic acid 4 and [bis(trifluoroacetoxy)iodo]benzene in boiling benzene or under irradiation in dichloromethane at room temperature (Scheme 2) [11, 12]. A similar procedure has been used for the stereoselective synthesis of C-nucleosides and their analogs via photolysis of the gulonic acid derivatives, (diacetoxy)iodobenzene, and the appropriate heteroaromatic bases [13]. 

Further modification of this procedure allows the use of alcohols as the source of alkyl radicals. In this case, alcohols are first converted into the oxalic acid monoalkyl esters 6, which are used as reagents in the radical alkylation of heteroaromatic bases (Scheme 3) [12,14]. 

In particular, the alkylation and acylation of protonated heteroarenes under oxidative conditions, commonly known as Minisci reaction, has attracted increasing interest in recent decades because of its synthetic involvement in biochemistry and pharmacology [3]. Beyond the fact that this reaction can be applied to all heteroaromatic bases and almost all carbonyl and alkyl radicals (without electron-withdrawing groups directly bonded to the radical center), the main characteristics of this process are high chemoselectivity and regioselectivity, the substitution usually occurring only in a and y positions. 

This reaction is based on the proposition that the sensitivity to polar effects in free-radical chemistry is the result of polarity and polarizability of both the radical and the substrate. This means that the polarity of the heteroaromatic base plays a key role in the process. Actually, the nucleophilic character of an alkyl radical, for example, is not so marked as to justify the addition to the N-heteroaromatic base, and in fact either no substitution occurs or low yields and selectivity are observed. 

The perfluoro alkylation of protonated N-heteroaromatic bases (Scheme 14.5a) gives high conversion, because of the high enthalpic effect, which can be ascribed to the stronger C—C bond formed when Rr rather than R radicals add to the substrate [26]. However, Rf-being an electrophilic radical, low selectivity is observed. 

When the reactions are carried out in the presence of electron-rich alkenes (Scheme 14.6), selective introduction of perfluoro-functionalized alkyl groups onto the heteroaromatic bases and quinones take place. This is possible because perfluoroalkyl radicals add more rapidly to alkenes than to the strongly electron-deficient substrates. These radical adducts show a reversed polar character compared to the perfluoroalkyl radicals and thus they react much more rapidly with the electron-deficient substrates, affording products with high selectivity. 

Alkyl iodides have been widely used for selective alkylation of heteroaromatic bases. The method is based on rapid iodine abstraction by aryl radicals (obtained from benzoyl peroxide or diazonium salts) or by a methyl radical (obtained from MeCOOH, t-BuOH, t-BuOOH, (t-BuO)2, (MeCOO)2, MeS0Me/H202, or MeC0Me/H202) [2]. An example is depicted in Eq. (14) of Table 3. 

Radical decarboxylative alkylation of heteroaromatic bases mediated by [bis(acyloxy)iodo]arenes... 

The simple photolytic or thermal decomposition of 0-acyl thiohydroxamates in benzene or pyridine as solvent yields the product of decarboxylative rearrangement, and not alkylbenzenes or alkylpyridines. However, photolysis in dichioromethane in the presence of protonated heteroaromatic bases results in the formation of alkylated heterocycles in good yield, as illustrated in equation (57). The great advantage of this latter method lies in the fact that the base to be alkylated is not used as the reaction solvent, which evidently permits the use of a much wider range of bases as trapping agents. 

Thus many compounds arc obtained (250, Table 24), which may be considered to be derived from C-alkylation of the nucleophilic reagent by the Mannich base. Alkyl ketonic and phenolic bases arc mostly involved in this reaction, which exhibits many analogies with aminomethylation, particularly concerning chemo- and regioselectivity on aromatic and heteroaromatic derivatives. Ring activation by means of hydroxy and amino substituents in the alkylation of pyridine and pyrimidine derivatives is also required. 

The reaction works well because both the site of hydrogen atom abstraction (34 —> 33) and the site of radical addition to the heteroaromatic base (33 + 35 -> 36) are well defined <86JOC536>. Likewise, addition of 1,3,5-trioxane 34 to 2-methylquinoline 37 is an efficient process since radical additions to quinolinium salts are heavily biased towards C4 when C2 bares an alkyl substituent (Scheme 15). 

Tiecco et al. found that 4-acylp5Tidines were prone to ipso-substitution reactions with 3°— alkyl radical intermediates such as 1-adamantyl and bicyclo[2,2,2]octyl radical <76CC329>. They reasoned that the reaction began with an electron transfer from S04 to the heteroaromatic base leading to radical cation 87. Addition of Ad to C4 then gave acetate 88,... 

In the first step, the carbon centered radical is generated. The second step involves the addition of this radical to the protonated ring. The third step consists of the rearomatization of the radical adduct by oxidation. The rates of addition of alkyl and acyl radicals to protonated heteroaromatic bases are much higher than those of possible competitive reactions, particularly those with solvents. Polar effects influence the rates of the radical additions to the heteroaromatic ring by decreasing the activation energy as the electron deficiency of the heterocyclic ring increases. 

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