Mannich proton catalysis

Scheme 5.95 Mukaiyama-Mannich reaction under proton catalysis of the chiral urea derivative 363.

As with aldol and Mukaiyama addition reactions, the Mannich reaction is subject to enantioselective catalysis.192 A catalyst consisting of Ag+ and the chiral imino aryl phosphine 22 achieves high levels of enantioselectivity with a range of N-(2-methoxyphenyljimines.193 The 2-methoxyphenyl group is evidently involved in an interaction with the catalyst and enhances enantioselectivity relative to other A-aryl substituents. The isopropanol serves as a proton source and as the ultimate acceptor of the trimethyl silyl group. 

Nitroethene is sufficiently electrophilic to substitute indole without the need for acid catalysis. Despite this, it has been shown that siUca-gel-supported CeCl3.7H20/NaI brings about such reactions at room temperature under solvent-free conditions or, to take another solvent extreme, the reaction occurs in water with a catalytic amount of a heteropoly acid (H3PWi204o). The employment of 2-dimethylamino-l-nitroethene in trifluoroacetic acid leads to 2-(indol-3-yl)nitroethene - the reactive species is the protonated enamine and the process is similar to a Mannich condensation (20.1.1.9). The use of 3-trimethylsilyl-indoles, with tpxo-substitution of the silicon, is an alternative means for effecting alkylation, avoiding the need for acid catalysis. 

Exposure of imidazole to normal Mannich conditions leads to A-(dimethylaminomethyl)imidazole, presumably via attack at the imine nitrogen, followed by loss of proton from the other nitrogen. A-Arylation or A-vinylation of imidazoles or benzimidazole can be achieved efficiently with metal catalysis (see 4.2). 

Arylethanamines react with aldehydes easily and in good yields to give imines. 1,2,3,4-Tetrahydroisoquinolines result from their cyclisation with acid catalysis. Note that the lower oxidation level imine, versus amide, leads to a tetrahydro- not a dihydroisoquinoline. After protonation of the imine, a Mannich-type electrophile is generated since these are intrinsically less electrophilic than the intermediates in Bischler-Napieralski closure, a strong activating substituent must be present, and appropriately sited on the aromatic ring, for efficient ring closure. 

The enamine catalysis detailed above proceeds via activation of the Mannich donor. An alternate strategy to the catalysis of the Mannich reaction is by the use of Brensted acids that activate the acceptor imine by protonation on nitrogen. Some of the most successful asymmetric variants of this process use BINOL-based phosphoric acids as catalysts. For instance Terada and coworkers used (7.144) to effect highly enantioselective addition of acetylacetone to a range of aryl aldimines ... 

Although detailed mechanistic studies on the Betti reaction have not been carried out, it is widely assumed the reaction follows a similar course to the Mannich reaction. This principally involves the condensation of the aldehyde and amine constituents to form the active iminium electrophile 7. 2-Naphthol (1) functions as a nucleophile, giving the intermediate represented by the resonance structures 8 and 9, which subsequently loses a proton to yield the product. It is easy to appreciate from this mechanism why acid catalysis may facilitate the reaction, and indeed increased rates have been observed using such catalysis. ... 

In the same year, Xu et al developed an efficient example of asymmetric cooperative catalysis applied to a domino oxa-Michael-Mannich reaction of salicylaldehydes with cyclohexenones. The proeess was eatalysed by a combination of two chiral catalysts, such as a chiral pyrrolidine and amino acid D-tert-leucine. The authors assumed that there was protonation of the aromatic nitrogen atom of the pyrrolidine catalyst by u-te/t-leucine, which spontaneously led to the corresponding ion-pair assembly (Scheme 2.6). This self-assembled catalyst possessed dual activation centres, enabling the catalysis of the electrophilic and nucleophilic substrates simultaneously. The domino oxa-Michael-Mannich reaction provided a range of versatile chiral tetrahydroxanthenones in high yields and high to excellent enantioselectivities of up to 98% ee, as shown in Scheme 2.6. 

In 2007, Ooi and coworkers introduced chiral tetraaminophosphonium salts as a new class of Bronsted acids [166]. Similar to the guanidine/guanidinium case, these tetraaminophosphonium salts act as Bronsted bases in their neutral/ deprotonated (triaminoiminophosphorane) form, while they can also be used as mono-functional Bronsted acids in their protonated, phosphonium form. Phos-phonium salt 67, when neutralized in situ with KO Bu, was shown to be a highly effective catalyst in the enantioselective Henry reaction of nitroalkanes with various aromatic and aliphatic aldehydes (Scheme 10.65). The same strategy was further applied to the catalytic asymmetric Henry reaction of ynals [167] and hydrophosphonylation of ynones (Scheme 10.66) [168]. Brfunctional catalysis using this scaffold were also obtained using the carboxylate salts of tetraaminophosphoniums in the direct Mannich reaction of sulfonyl imines with azlactones (Scheme 10.67) [169]. 

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