Organolithium reagents cyclization

Annulation of aryl halides with ortho side chains bearing a pendant electi ophilic moiety via treatment with an organolithium reagent, involving halogen-metal exchange and subsequent nucleophilic cyclization to form 4- to 7-membered rings. 

Evidence for a radical coupling mechanism (as opposed to a carbanionic carbonyl addition mechanism) in the intramolecular Smh-promoted Barbier reactions has come from studies on appropriately functionalized substrates in the 3-keto ester series. It is well known that heterosubstituents are rapidly eliminated when they are adjacent to a carbanionic center. Indeed, treatment of a 3-methoxy organic halide (suitably functionalized for cyclization ) with an organolithium reagent leads only to alkene (equation 48). No cyclized material can be detected. On the other hand, treatment of the same substrate with Sml2 provides cyclized product and a small amount of reduced alcohol, with none of the alkene detected by gas chromatographic analysis (equation 49). ... 

Control in the selection of ring substituents is an important element of oxazole synthesis. This is a feature of a new route that employs 0-trimethylsilyl acyltrimethylsilane cyanohydrins (148), which are obtained from aldehydes or acyl silanes <92JOC333l>. These intermediates, which provide the C-5 substituent and four of the five ring atoms, are reacted sequentially with organolithium reagents (C-4 substituent) and acyl chlorides or anhydrides (C-2 substituent) to furnish, -bis(trimethylsilyl) enamines (149), which cyclize under thermal conditions or upon treatment with trimethylsilyl trilluoromethanesulfonate (Scheme 68). The range of oxazoles accessible by this method includes those with alkyl, alkenyl, phenyl, and functionalized substituents at C-2, alkyl, alkenyl, and phenyl substituents at C-4, and alkyl and phenyl substituents at C-5. The rare 4-(, -dialkylamino)oxazoles (150) may also be prepared. 

Novel variants on established carbanion routes to cyclopentanes include the use of thio-esters in a Dieckmann cyclization" (which proceeds under milder conditions than the parent reaction), an intramolecular displacement involving transfer of chirality to the ring being formed [(59) - (60)], and a case where the carbanion is generated by conjugate addition of an organolithium reagent to an... 

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