Kinetic Resolution of Keto- and Imino-Compounds

Kinetic resolution results of ketone and imine derivatives are indicated in Table 21.19. In the kinetic resolution of cyclic ketones or keto esters, ruthenium atrop-isomeric diphosphine catalysts 25 induced high enantiomer-discriminating ability, and high enantiopurity is realized at near 50% conversion [116, 117]. In the case of a bicyclic keto ester, the presence of hydrogen chloride in methanol served to raise the enantiomer-discriminating ability of the Ru-binap catalyst (entry 1) [116]. 

Racemic 2,5-disubstituted 1-pyrrolines were kinetically resolved effectively by hydrogenation with a chiral titanocene catalyst 26 at 50% conversion, which indicates a large difference in the reaction rate of the enantiomers (Table 21.19, entries 4 and 5), while 2,3- or 2,4-disubstituted 1-pyrrolines showed moderate selectivity in the kinetic resolution (entries 6 and 7) [118]. The enantioselectivity of the major product with cis-configuration was very high for all disubstituted pyrrolidines. The high selectivity obtained with 2,5-disubstituted pyrrolines can be explained by the interaction of the substituent at C5 with the tetrahydroinde-nyl moieties of the catalyst [Eq. (17)]. 

In the kinetic resolution, the yield of desired optically active product cannot exceed 50% based on the racemic substrate, even if the chiral-discriminating ability of the chiral catalyst is extremely high. In order to obtain one diastereomer selectively, the conversion must be suppressed to less than 50%, while in order to obtain one enantiomer of the starting material selectively, a higher than 50% conversion is required. If the stereogenic center is labile in the racemic substrate, one can convert the substrate completely to gain almost 100% yield of the diastereomer formation by utilizing dynamic stereomutation. 

In the hydrogenation of cyclic / -keto esters (ketones substituted with an al-koxycarbonyl moiety), Ru(II)-binap reduced a racemic substrate in DCM with high anti-diastereoselectivity to give a 99 1 mixture of the trans-hydroxy ester (92% ee) and the ds-hydroxy ester (92% ee), quantitatively [Eq. (18)] [119, 120]. 

The sense of diastereoselectivity in the dynamic kinetic resolution of 2-substi-tuted / -keto esters depends on the structure of the keto ester. The ruthenium catalyst with atropisomeric diphosphine ligands (binap, MeO-biphep, synphos, etc.) induced syn-products in high diastereomeric and enantiomeric selectivity in the dynamic kinetic resolution of / -keto esters with an a-amido or carbamate moiety (Table 21.21) [119-121, 123, 125-127]. In contrast to the above examples of a-amido-/ -keto esters, the TsOH or HC1 salt of /l-keto esters with an a-amino unit were hydrogenated with excellent cwti-selectivity using ruthenium-atropiso- 

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