Nucleophiles sulfur compounds

In organo-fluorine compounds fluorine atoms can be eliminated by nucleophilic sulfur species to form C —S bonds. In principle, the fluorine to be eliminated can be bonded to aliphatic or araliphatic compounds, as well as to aromatic or heterocyclic compounds however, the replacement proceeds more efficiently the more the fluorine is activated. Therefore, the synthetic usefulness of these reactions is the broadest with fluoroaromatic compounds, including heteroaromatics, with which the reactions often proceed smoothly under mild conditions. The nucleophilic sulfur compound to be reacted is. in most cases, an aliphatic or aromatic thiol or a metal sulfide, but reactions with, for example, thiourea or ammonium thiocyanate have also been described. The sulfur introduced this way can be either oxidized or removed by reduction, opening additional possibilities for modifications of the original fluoro compounds. 

The activity of sulfur towards platinum complexes has led to investigation of so-called rescue agents to ameliorate the side effects of platinum therapy, without compromising its anti-tumor activity. These nucleophilic sulfur compounds include sodium thiosulfate (STS), sodium diethyldithio-carbamate (Naddtc), (S)- 2-[(3-aminopropyl)amino]ethyl phosphorothioic acid (WR-2721, Ethyol , amifostine), glutathione (GSH), methionine, thiourea, cysteine, -acetylcysteine, penicillamine, biotin, sulfathiazole, sodium 2-mercaptoethanesulfonate (mesna), and its dimer (di)mesna (BNP-7787). The protective effect of these compounds is either due to prevention, or reversal of Pt-S adducts in proteins. Some of the more promising of the above-mentioned compounds (see Fig. 1) will be discussed below. 

Sulfoxides (R1—SO—R2), which are tricoordinate sulfur compounds, are chiral when R1 and R2 are different, and a-sulfmyl carbanions derived from optically active sulfoxides are known to retain the chirality. Therefore, these chiral carbanions usually give products which are rich in one diastereomer upon treatment with some prochiral reagents. Thus, optically active sulfoxides have been used as versatile reagents for asymmetric syntheses of many naturally occurring products116, since optically active a-sulfinyl carbanions can cause asymmetric induction in the C—C bond formation due to their close vicinity. In the following four subsections various reactions of a-sulfinyl carbanions are described (A) alkylation and acylation, (B) addition to unsaturated bonds such as C=0, C=N or C= N, (C) nucleophilic addition to a, /5-unsaturated sulfoxides, and (D) reactions of allylic sulfoxides. 

Sulfur compounds " are better nucleophiles than their oxygen analogs (p. 439), so in most cases these reactions take place faster and more smoothly than the corresponding reactions with oxygen nucleophiles. There is evidence that some of these reactions take place by SET mechanisms. ... 

Neutral sulfur compounds are also good nucleophiles, Sulfides and thioamides readily form salts with methyl iodide, for example. 

Sulfur compounds are useful as nucleophilic acyl equivalents. The most common reagents of this type are 1,3-dithianes, which on lithiation provide a nucleophilic acyl equivalent. In dithianes an umpolung is achieved on the basis of the carbanion-stabilizing ability of the sulfur substituents. The lithio derivative is a reactive nucleophile toward alkyl halides and carbonyl compounds. 11... 

Plummer invented a process for the biodesulfurization of hydrocarbons [157], in which organic sulfur compounds contained in liquid hydrocarbons are converted to elemental sulfur. The reaction is carried out in the presence of a biocatalyst and hydrogen, by dissolving completely the liquid hydrocarbons in an organic solvent, such as a nucleophilic and/or electrophilic solvent(s). The nucleophilic solvent should have a pKa greater than 2, and the electrophilic solvent more negative than -2. Recommended nucleophilic solvents include -butylamine, diethylamine, butanediamine, ethylenimine, toluene, pyridine, aniline, and acetophenone. The electrophilic solvents could be methylethylketone, pyrrole, or benzaldehyde. 

However, the major factor stimulating the rapid development of static and dynamic sulfur stereochemistry was the interest in the mechanism and steric course of nucleophilic substitution reactions at chiral sulfur. Very recently, chiral organic sulfur compounds have attracted much attention as useful and efficient reagents in asymmetric synthesis. 

The replacement of the oxygen atom in sulfoxides by nitrogen leads to a new class of chiral sulfur compounds, namely, sulfimides, which recently have attracted considerable attention in connection with the stereochemistry of sulfoxide-sulfimide-sulfoximide conversion reactions and with the steric course of nucleophilic substitution at sulfur. The first examples of chiral sulfimides, 88 and 89, were prepared and resolved into enantiomers by Phillips (127,128) by means of the brucine and cinchonidine salts as early as 1927. In the same way, Kresze and Wustrow (129) were able to separate the enantiomers of other structurally related sulfimides. 

Finally, it should be stressed that various nucleophilic and electrophilic reactions that lead from sulfoxides and sulfinates of known absolute configuration to new chiral tri- and tetracoordinate sulfur compounds and follow a stereochemically unambiguous course can be utilized for configurational assignments. Some of these reactions... 

This section surveys the most important reactions of chiral organo-sulfur compounds. Some of these were touched on in the previous sections. For the sake of convenience, a variety of reactions occurring at the chiral sulfur center are divided into three main types of reactions racemization, nucleophilic substitution reactions, and electrophilic reactions. 

As the last point in Sect. IV, we discuss briefly the reactions of chiral sulfur compounds with electrophilic reagents. In contrast to nucleophilic substitution reactions, the number of known electrophilic reactions at sulfur is very small and practically limited to chiral tricoordinate sulfur compounds that on reacting with electrophilic reagents produce more stable tetracoordinate derivatives. It is generally assumed that the electrophilic attack is directed on the lone electron pair on sulfur and that the reaction is accompanied by retention of configuration. As typical examples of electrophilic reactions at tricoordinate sulfur, we mention oxidation, imination, alkylation, and halogenation. All these reactions were touched on in the section dealing with the synthesis of chiral tetracoordinate sulfur compounds. 

We hope that this review of chiral sulfur compounds will be useful to chemists interested in various aspects of chemistry and stereochemistry. The facts and problems discussed provide numerous possibilities for the study of additional stereochemical phenomena at sulfur. As a consequence of the extent of recent research on the application of oiganosulfur compounds in synthesis, further developments in the field of sulfur stereochemistry and especially in the area of asymmetric synthesis may be expected. Looking to the future, it may be said that the static and dynamic stereochemistry of tetra- and pentacoordinate trigonal-bipyramidal sulfur compounds will be and should be the subject of further studies. Similarly, more investigations will be needed to clarify the complex nature of nucleophilic substitution at tri- and tetracoordinate sulfur. Finally, we note that this chapter was intended to be illustrative, not exhaustive therefore, we apologize to the authors whose important work could not be included. 

Organosulfur chemistry is presently a particularly dynamic subject area. The stereochemical aspects of this field are surveyed by M. Mikojajczyk and J. Drabowicz. in the fifth chapter, entitled Qural Organosulfur Compounds. The synthesis, resolution, and application of a wide range of chiral sulfur compounds are described as are the determination of absolute configuration and of enantiomeric purity of these substances. A discussion of the dynamic stereochemistry of chiral sulfur compounds including racemization processes follows. Finally, nucleophilic substitution on and reaction of such compounds with electrophiles, their use in asymmetric synthesis, and asymmetric induction in the transfer of chirality from sulfur to other centers is discussed in a chapter that should be of interest to chemists in several disciplines, in particular synthetic and natural product chemistry. 

The concept of ligand coupling within hypervalent intermediates can be widely applied not only to the reactions of organic sulfur compounds with nucleophiles, but also to many of those in which the central heteroatoms... 

Sulfur compounds with divalent sulfur functionalities are much more prone to dioxirane oxidation on account of their higher nucleophilicity compared to the above-presented oxygen-type nucleophiles. Examples of this type of dioxirane oxidation abound in the literature. Such a case is the oxidation of thiols, which may be quite complex and afford a complex mixture of oxidation products, e.g. sulfinic acids, sulfonic acids, disulfides, thiosulfonates and aldehydes , and is, therefore, hardly useful in synthesis. Nevertheless, the oxidation of some 9i/-purine-6-thiols in the presence of an amine nucleophile produces n >( -nucleoside analogs in useful yields (equation 19). This reaction also displays the general chemoselectivity trend that divalent sulfur functionalities are more reactive than trivalent sp -hybridized nitrogen compounds P. 

This enzyme system catalyzes the oxidation of various nitrogen-, sulfur -, and phosphorus-containing compounds, which tend to be nucleophilic, although compounds with an anionic group are not substrates. For example, the N-oxidation of trimethylamine (Fig. 4.19) is catalyzed by this enzyme, but also the hydroxylation of secondary amines, imines, and arylamines and the oxidation of hydroxylamines and hydrazines ... 

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