Oxirane activation

Starting with a population of more than 100 patients suspected of aspirin intolerance and suffering from asthma with or without nasal polyposis, Sainte-Laudy in Paris employed the clinical histories, skin tests, IgE determinations, and BAT to find nine cases involving an IgE antibody-dependent mechanism. For the IgE assay, aspirin-lysine was mixed with epoxy (bis-oxirane)-activated Sepharose (Sect. 4.3.1) to form the aspirin solid phase. 

D.M. Head, B.A. Andrews, J.A. Asenjo, Epoxy-oxirane activation of PEG for protein ligand coupling. Biotechnol. Tech., 3 (1) 27-32, 1989. 

Specialty Epoxy Resins. In addition to bisphenol, other polyols such as aUphatic glycols and novolaks are used to produce specialty resins. Epoxy resins may also include compounds based on aUphatic, cycloaUphatic, aromatic, and heterocycHc backbones. Glycidylation of active hydrogen-containing stmctures with epichlorohydrin and epoxidation of olefins with peracetic acid remain the important commercial procedures for introducing the oxirane group into various precursors of epoxy resins. 

Oxirane (1) and methyloxirane (3) are miscible with water, ethyloxirane is very soluble in water, while compounds such as cyclopentene oxide and higher oxiranes are essentially insoluble (B-73MI50501) (for a discussion of the solubilities of heterocycles, see (63PMH(l)l77)). Other physical properties of heterocycles, such as dipole moments and electrochemical properties, are discussed in various chapters of pmh. The optical activity of chiral oxiranes has been investigated by ab initio molecular orbital methods (8UA1023). 

There are several examples of the synthesis of optically active oxiranes by /3-elimination, e.g. (80TL2733, 81HCA687, 81JOC3348). 

Reaction of pyroc techol with epichlorohydrin in the presence of base affords the benzodioxan derivative, 136, (The reaction may well involve initial displacement of halogen by phenoxide followed by opening of the oxirane by the anion from the second phenolic group.) Treatment of the alcohol with thio-nyl chloride gives the corresponding chloro compound (137). Displacement of halogen by means of diethylamine affords piper-oxan (138), a compound with a-sympathetic blocking activity. 

Substitution of an additional nitrogen atom onto the three-carbon side chain also serves to suppress tranquilizing activity at the expense of antispasmodic activity. Reaction of phenothia zine with epichlorohydrin by means of sodium hydride gives the epoxide 121. It should be noted that, even if initial attack in this reaction is on the epoxide, the alkoxide ion that would result from this nucleophilic addition can readily displace the adjacent chlorine to give the observed product. Opening of the oxirane with dimethylamine proceeds at the terminal position to afford the amino alcohol, 122. The amino alcohol is then converted to the halide (123). A displacement reaction with dimethylamine gives aminopromazine (124). ... 

The second system studied was the separation of the chiral epoxide enantiomers (la,2,7,7a-tetrahydro-3-methoxynaphth-(2,3b)-oxirane Sandoz Pharma) used as an intermediate in the enantioselective synthesis of optically active drugs. The SMB has been used to carry out this chiral separation [27, 34, 35]. The separation can be performed using microcrystalline cellulose triacetate as stationary phase with an average particle diameter greater than 45 )tm. The eluent used was pure methanol. A... 

A synthesis of optically active oxiranes was based on this reaction and applied to cyclohexanone3. 

Durst and coworkers were the first to report the condensation of chiral a-sulphinyl carbanions with carbonyl compounds477. They found that metallation of ( + )-(S)-benzyl methyl sulphoxide 397 followed by quenching with acetone gives a mixture of dia-stereoisomeric /i-hydroxy sulphoxides 398 in a 15 1 ratio (equation 233). The synthesis of optically active oxiranes was based on this reaction (equation 234). In this context, it is interesting to point out that condensation of benzyl phenyl sulphoxide with benzaldehyde gave a mixture of four / -sulphinyl alcohols (40% overall yield), the ratio of which after immediate work-up was 41 19 8 32478. 

The principle of active-site-directed inactivation of glycosidases by gly-con-related epoxides can be extended to compounds having an exocyclic oxirane ring, either directly attached to the six-membered ring (32) or at some distance (33,34). Studies with -o-glucosidase from sweet almonds and intestinal sucrase-isomaltase revealed that, in spite of the higher intrinsic reactivity of these epoxides, this shift of the position of the epoxide function causes a 10- to 30-fold decrease of kj(max)/Ki, an effect which probably reflects the limited flexibility of the catalytic groups involved in the epoxide reaction. 

Despite a higher intrinsic reactivity, epoxides of type 35 and 36 show a lower inactivation rate kj(max), as seen in Table XI, than the conduritol epoxides. This is probably caused by the greater flexibility of the epoxyalkyl chain in the active-site cleft, and by non-productive binding in positions where the oxirane is not within reach of the catalytic groups of the active site. For epoxypropyl oligosaccharides, this would hold even when the inhibitor occupies the correct subsites. 

---