Organolithium reagents asymmetric

The asymmetric addition of organolithium reagents to arylox azolines has been used to construct highly complex polycyclic terpene structures found in natural products. For example, the asymmetric addition of vinyllithium to chiral naphthyloxazoline 3 followed by treatment of the resulting anionic intermediate with iodoethyl dioxolane 61... 

When chiral additives such as ( —)-sparteine has added to the initial reaction with the organolithium reagent, quenching with CO2 produces carboxylic acids with good asymmetric induction. 

Organolithium compounds are highly reactive and have been used in a variety of organic transformations. A major problem in the development of catalytic asymmetric conjugate additions of organolithium reagents to a,/3-unsaturated carbonyl compounds is that the high reactivity of RLi may cause both low chemoselectivity (1,2- vs. 1,4-addition) and low enantioselectivity. 

The C2 symmetric chiral diether 28" and the naturally occurring chiral diamine, (—)-sparteine (29), have been the most successful external chiral ligands for asymmetric conjugate addition of organolithium reagents. The rest of this review highlights organolithium addition, which is mediated or sometimes catalyzed by 28 or 29. 

The enantioselective addition of the amino organolithium reagents consists of two stereo-controlled reactions, the asymmetric deprotonation (equation 14) and the following addition to electrophiles. The stereochemical course of the addition depends on the electrophile E. In the cases where heterocyclic enone or a,-unsaturated lactones are the electrophiles (entries 5-7), the addition proceeds with retention of configuration. In contrast, with the other electrophiles in Table 10 and trimethyltin chloride in equation 15, the addition proceeds with inversion of configuration. In the addition which proceeds with retention of configuration, a pre-complexation between the electrophiles and lithium may be involved (equation 16). 

By the extension of the above-mentioned stereoselective asymmetric addition of alkylithiums to other organolithium reagents such as lithium salts of methyl phenyl sulfide, 2-methylthiazoline, trialkylsilylacetylene, N-nitroso-dimethylamine, and acetonitrile, chiral oxiranes (95) U1), thiiranes (96) nl), acetylenic alcohols (98) 112), and amino alcohols (97) U1) were readily obtained. 

SCHEME 2. Asymmetric conjugate addition of organolithium reagents with stoichiometric chiral ligands. Adapted with permission from Acc. Chem. Res., 40, 179-188 (2007). Copyright 2007 American Chemical Society... 

These reagents add to the chiral ketones 3 with high 1,5-asymmetric induction. Grignard and organolithium reagents show slight diastereoselectivity.3 Example ... 

The asymmetric addition of organomagnesium and organolithium reagents to a,P-unsaturated carbonyl compounds and especially imines can be achieved in situations where rigid chelation controls the geometry of the transition state. Stereospecific alkyl addition occurs in the case of a chiral leucine-derived imine to provide overall asymmetric alkyl addition to an a,P-unsaturated aldehyde (Scheme 107).380 381... 

Several asymmetric 1,2-additions of various organolithium reagents (methyllithium, n-butyllithium, phenyllithium, lithioacetonitrile, lithium n-propylacetylide, and lithium (g) phenylacetylide) to aldehydes result in decent to excellent ee% (65-98%) when performed in the presence of a chiral lithium amido sulfide [e.g. (14)], 75 The chiral lithium amido sulfides invariably have exhibited higher levels of enantioselectivity compared to the structurally similar chiral lithium amido ethers and the chiral lithium amide without a chelating group. 

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