4-Hydroxy-3-nitrobenzaldehyde synthesis

This is by far the most versatile route to the synthesis of ester-substituted aziridines, especially as the benzhydryl group can easily be cleaved by hydrogenolysis. Wulff has applied this methodology to a short asymmetric synthesis of the antibiotic (-)-chloramphenicol in four steps from p-nitrobenzaldehyde (Scheme 1.34) [61]. In this case it was found that treatment of the aziridine 111 with excess dichloroacetic acid gave the hydroxy acetamide directly, so no separate deprotection step was required. 

Derivatization of functional groups in a natural-product scaffold can also be effectively performed on the solid-phase. An example of this is the synthesis of a small compound collection (27-compounds) based on the tetrahydroquinoline scaffold. A chiral tetrahydroquinoline scaffold was synthesized in solution from 5-hydroxy-2-nitrobenzaldehyde (Scheme 4). The synthesis involved a key asymmetric aminohydroxylation step. This building block was anchored to the solid support with a Wang linker and diversity was introduced by selective deprotection and derivatization of the protected hydroxyl and amino substituents. 

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