Iminium activation Michael reactions

Jorgensen showed that the asymmetric synthesis of cyclohexene derivatives can also be accomplished by reaction of two equivalents of an enal with an active methylene compound. The sequence comprising two iminium-activated Michael additions followed by enamine-mediated aldol reaction afforded various cyclohexene carboxaldehydes (Scheme 8.20). 

Carbon-carbon bond forming reactions between carbanionic nucleophiles like enolates or deprotonated nitroalkanes and electron deficient alkenes and alkynes belong to the oldest and most versatile transformations known today (225-229). Moreover, stereoselective variants have proven to possess an enormous potential in the syntheses of complex molecules as already exemplified in Sect. 2.4. Whereas the applications depicted in this previous section utilized nucleophiles activated by enamine formation with a chiral secondary amine catalyst to achieve these highly selective C-C bond formations, the present discussirai will focus on the addition of carbon nucleophiles to iminium-activated Michael acceptors. Herein traditional Michael additions using e.g. enolate nucleophiles will be described whereas the use of aromatic Michael donors with iminium-activated acceptors in Friedel-Crafts type reactions will be discussed separately subsequently. 

Other iminium-activated cascade reactions, including [4-e3] cycloaddition, Robinson annulations, and reductive Michael cyclization, were also developed to furnish useful synthons [133]. 

The majority of the Michael-type conjugate additions are promoted by amine-based catalysts and proceed via an enamine or iminium intermediate species. Subsequently, Jprgensen et al. [43] explored the aza-Michael addition of hydra-zones to cyclic enones catalyzed by Cinchona alkaloids. Although the reaction proceeds under pyrrolidine catalysis via iminium activation of the enone, and also with NEtj via hydrazone activation, both methods do not confer enantioselectivity to the reaction. Under a Cinchona alkaloid screen, quinine 3 was identified as an effective aza-Michael catalyst to give 92% yield and 1 3.5 er (Scheme 4). 

Activation of enones by formation of an iminium cation is an interesting strategy that has been highlighted for organocatalysis in recent publications. A similar concept has been investigated for the enantioselective Michael reaction of malo-... 

MacMillan s catalysts 56a and 61 allowed also the combination of the domino 1,4-hydride addition followed by intramolecular Michael addition [44]. The reaction is chemoselective, as the hydride addition takes place first on the iminium-activated enal. The enamine-product of the reaction is trapped in a rapid intramolecular reaction by the enone, as depicted in Scheme 2.54. The intramolecular trapping is efficient, as no formation of the saturated aldehyde can be observed. The best results were obtained with MacMillan s imidazolidinium salt 61 and Hantzsch ester 62 as hydride source. As was the case in the cyclization reaction, the reaction affords the thermodynamic trans product in high selectivity. This transformation sequence is particularly important in demonstrating that the same catalyst may trigger different reactions via different mechanistic pathways, in the same reaction mixture. 

A particularly difficult situation arises when combining in the same reaction the use of these rather unreactive acceptors such as enones with the incorporation of ketones as Michael donors in which the formation of the intermediate enamine by condensation with the amine catalyst is much more difficult. For this reason, the organocatalytic Michael addition of ketones to enones still remains rather unexplored. An example has been outlined in Scheme 2.22, in which it has been shown that pyrrolidine-sulfonamide 3a could catalyze the Michael reaction between cyclic ketones and enones with remarkably good results, although the reaction scope was exclusively studied for the case of cyclic six-membered ring ketones as nucleophiles and 1,4-diaryl substituted enones as electrophiles. In this system the authors also pointed toward a mechanism involving exclusively enamine-type activation of the nucleophile, with no contribution of any intermediate iminium species which could eventually activate the electrophile. Surprisingly, the use of primary amines as catalysts in this transformation has not been already considered. 

The catalytic cycle operating for a generic Michael-type reaction of a nucleophile (Nu-H) to an a, 3-unsaturated aldehyde or ketone proceeding via iminium activation has been indicated in Scheme 3.1. As it can be seen in this proposed mechanism, all the steps involving iminium formation and hydrolysis are supposed to be in dynamic equilibrium, therefore concluding that the conjugate... 

Figure 3.1 Factors to be considered when designing a chiral secondary amine catalyst to be used in Michael reactions under iminium activation.

The diflferent reactivity of aldehydes and ketones toward condensation with amines is also a differentiating element when using enals or enones as Michael donors under iminium activation. As in the enamine activation case, working with a,p-unsaturated aldehydes usually leads to faster reactions or better conversions but the same reaction with enones in many cases turns out to be a very slow or even non-existent reaction. Stereochemical control is also more problematic when a,p-unsaturated ketones are employed because the presence... 

Alternatively, the iminium-activation strategy has also been apphed to the Mukaiyama-Michael reaction, which involves the use of silyl enol ethers as nucleophiles. In this context, imidazolidinone 50a was identified as an excellent chiral catalyst for the enantioselective conjugate addition of silyloxyfuran to a,p-unsaturated aldehydes, providing a direct and efficient route to the y-butenolide architecture (Scheme 3.15). This is a clear example of the chemical complementarity between organocatalysis and transition-metal catalysis, with the latter usually furnishing the 1,2-addition product (Mukaiyama aldol) while the former proceeds via 1,4-addition when ambident electrophiles such as a,p-unsaturated aldehydes are employed. This reaction needed the incorporation of 2,4-dinitrobenzoic acid (DNBA) as a Bronsted acid co-catalyst assisting the formation of the intermediate iminium ion, and also two equivalents of water had to be included as additive for the reaction to proceed to completion, which... 

The phospha-Michael reaction has been the last hetero-Michael reaction to be developed under iminium activation. In addition to the selectivity issues that have to be addressed, the identification of a suitable phosphorous nucleophile has been the most difficult task to overcome when developing the reaction because of the high tendency of phosphines toward oxidation in the presence of air. The first example was developed independently by Melchiorre and... 

As also happened in the iminium activation case, the Michael reaction has been the most studied conjugate addition reaction in this context, also serving as a... 

This dual enamine/iminium activation profile in cascade Michael/aldol reactions can also be found even in some early reports, mostly focused on the self-dimerization of enals catalyzed by proline or analogues derived thereof, which generally proceeded with low enantioselect vities. There is not a clear and definitive mechanistic pathway confirmed for these reactions, although the most widely accepted proposal for the dimerization of enals (Scheme 7.4) ° involved sequential activation of one molecule of the substrate as a dienamine (Michael donor) and another molecule as iminium ion (Michael acceptor). 

Tricarbonyl compounds have also been employed as potential 1,3-dinucleophiles able to undergo a first Michael addition step with a,p-unsatu-rated aldehydes and which can afterwards react with the remaining formyl group for the formation of a cyclohexane ring (Scheme 7.23). This has led to the development of a couple of cascade processes consisting of a Michael reaction proceeding in an asymmetric fashion by iminium activation of the enal. 

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