Nitrogen nucleophiles, Tsuji-Trost reaction

The water soluble vitamin (+)-biotin was synthesized by M. Seki and co-workers from L-cysteine in only 11 steps using inexpensive reagents and mild reaction conditions." The key ring forming step was an intramolecular allylic amination Tsuji-Trost reaction using a nitrogen nucleophile) of a cis allylic carbonate. As expected with a soft nucleophile, the allylation took place with an overall retention of configuration. 

The Tsuji-Trost reaction is the palladinum-catalyzed substitution of allylic leaving groups by carbon nucleophiles. The nucleophile can be carbon-, nitrogen-, or oxygen- based compounds such as alcohols, enolates, phenols, and enamines, and the leaving group can be a halide or an acetate. This emerged as a powerful procedure for the formation of C—C, C—O and C—N bonds. The reaction, also known as Trost allylation or allylic alkylation, was named after Jiro Tsuij, who first reported the method in 1965 [42], and Barry Trost, who introduced an asymmetric version in 1973 [43]. 

Thanks to the fundamental studies of Tsuji, Trost, and others, palladium-catalyzed allylic substitution has become a versatile, widely used process in organic synthesis [40]. The search for efficient enantioselective catalysts for this class of reactions is an important goal of current research in this field [41]. It has been shown that chiral phosphine ligands can induce substantial enantiomeric excesses in Pd-catalyzed reactions of racemic or achiral allylic substrates with nucleophiles [42]. Recently, promising results have also been obtained with chiral bidentate nitrogen ligands [43]. We have found that palladium complexes of neutral aza-semicorrin or methylene-bis(oxazoline) ligands are effective catalysts for the enantioselective allylic alkylation of l,3-diphenyl-2-propenyl acetate or related substrates with dimethyl malonate (Schemes 18 [25,30] and 19 [44]). 

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