Prochiral asymmetrization

Chiral aluminium hydride for the asymmetric reduction of prochiral ketones... 

Among chiral dialkylboranes, diisopinocampheylborane (8) is the most important and best-studied asymmetric hydroborating agent. It is obtained in both enantiomeric forms from naturally occurring a-pinene. Several procedures for its synthesis have been developed (151—153). The most convenient one, providing product of essentially 100% ee, involves the hydroboration of a-pinene with borane—dimethyl sulfide in tetrahydrofuran (154). Other chiral dialkylboranes derived from terpenes, eg, 2- and 3-carene (155), limonene (156), and longifolene (157,158), can also be prepared by controlled hydroboration. A more tedious approach to chiral dialkylboranes is based on the resolution of racemates. /n j -2,5-Dimethylborolane, which shows excellent enantioselectivity in the hydroboration of all principal classes of prochiral alkenes except 1,1-disubstituted terminal double bonds, has been... 

Asymmetric Hydroboration. Hydroboration—oxidation of (Z)-2-butene with diisopinocampheylborane was the first highly enantioselective asymmetric synthesis (496) the product was R(—)2-butanol in 87% ee. Since then several asymmetric hydroborating agents have been developed. Enantioselectivity in the hydroboration of significant classes of prochiral alkenes with representative asymmetric hydroborating agents is shown in Table 3. 

Efficient enantioselective asymmetric hydrogenation of prochiral ketones and olefins has been accompHshed under mild reaction conditions at low (0.01— 0.001 mol %) catalyst concentrations using rhodium catalysts containing chiral ligands (140,141). Practical synthesis of several optically active natural... 

The carbonyl carbon of an unsymmetrical ketone is a prochiral center reaction with a Grignard reagent 2 (R 7 R, R") can take place on either face of the carbonyl group with equal chance. The products 8a and 8b are consequently formed in equal amounts as racemic mixture, as long as no asymmetric induction becomes effective ... 

Amino acid separations represent another specific application of the technology. Amino acids are important synthesis precursors - in particular for pharmaceuticals -such as, for example, D-phenylglycine or D-parahydroxyphenylglycine in the preparation of semisynthetic penicillins. They are also used for other chiral fine chemicals and for incorporation into modified biologically active peptides. Since the unnatural amino acids cannot be obtained by fermentation or from natural sources, they must be prepared by conventional synthesis followed by racemate resolution, by asymmetric synthesis, or by biotransformation of chiral or prochiral precursors. Thus, amino acids represent an important class of compounds that can benefit from more efficient separations technology. 

In a catalytic asymmetric reaction, a small amount of an enantio-merically pure catalyst, either an enzyme or a synthetic, soluble transition metal complex, is used to produce large quantities of an optically active compound from a precursor that may be chiral or achiral. In recent years, synthetic chemists have developed numerous catalytic asymmetric reaction processes that transform prochiral substrates into chiral products with impressive margins of enantio-selectivity, feats that were once the exclusive domain of enzymes.56 These developments have had an enormous impact on academic and industrial organic synthesis. In the pharmaceutical industry, where there is a great emphasis on the production of enantiomeri-cally pure compounds, effective catalytic asymmetric reactions are particularly valuable because one molecule of an enantiomerically pure catalyst can, in principle, direct the stereoselective formation of millions of chiral product molecules. Such reactions are thus highly productive and economical, and, when applicable, they make the wasteful practice of racemate resolution obsolete. 

A convenient and simple route to chiral sulphoxides is an asymmetric oxidation of prochiral sulphides by optically active oxidizing reagents. 

In contrast to the asymmetric procedures discussed above, the metal-catalyzed oxidation of alkyl aryl sulphides by t-butylhydroperoxide carried out in a chiral alcohol gives rise to chiral sulphoxides of low optical purity290 (e.e. 0.6 9.8%). Similarly, a very low asymmetric induction was noted when prochiral sulphides were oxidized by sodium metaperiodate in chiral alcohols as solvents291. 

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. 

Table 1.1 Influence ofcosolvents on the asymmetric hydrolysis the prochiral diester (1) catalyzed by pig liver esterase. of...

In an asymmetric synthesis, the enantiomeric composition of the product remains constant as the reaction proceeds. In practice, ho vever, many enzymatic desymmetrizations undergo a subsequent kinetic resolution as illustrated in Figure 6.5. For instance, hydrolysis of a prochiral diacetate first gives the chiral monoalcohol monoester, but this product is also a substrate for the hydrolase, resulting in the production of... 

The first asymmetric synthesis of (—)-Y-jasmolactone, a fruit fiavor constituent, vas achieved via the enantioselective lactonization (desymmetrization) of a prochiral hydroxy diester promoted by porcine pancreas lipase (PPL) (Figure 6.23) [71]. 

In the above cases, an optically active reducing agent or catalyst interacts with a prochiral substrate. Asymmetric reduction of ketones has also been achieved with an achiral reducing agent, if the ketone is complexed to an optically active transition metal Lewis acid. ... 

The asymmetric synthesis of 2,3-diamino acids can be accomplished by the addition of chiral enolates to prochiral imines. For example, reaction of morpholine-2-one 103, derived from (S)-phenylglycinol, with N-benzyl ben-zaldimine in the presence of pyridine and para-toluenesulfonic acid at high... 

A similar method was later used by the group of Tomioka [10] for the asymmetric addition of thiazolylhthium 44 to prochiral aldimines (Scheme 10) for the preparation of (S)-Boc-Doe 46, a component of antileukemic marine natural product dolastatin 10. In this case, sparteine 1 was... 

Chiral diamino carbene complexes of rhodium have been merely used in asymmetric hydrosilylations of prochiral ketones but also in asymmetric addition of aryl boron reagents to enones. 

Asymmetric deprotonation of prochiral cychc ketones (Scheme 50) was performed with chiral ureas in the presence of butylhthium. Yields were good (85-88%) with high enantioselectivities (83-87%). Moderate enantioselectiv-ity is obtained with the cyclopentyl-containing urea (Scheme 50 37% ee with R = Ph 7% ee with R = Me) [ 168,169]. 

Fig. 1. P MAS NMR spectrum of (a)Ru-BrNAP/PTA/y-Al203, and (b)Ru-BINAP crt rlex In order to find the characteristics of the immobilized catalyst, asymmetric hydrogenation of the prochiral C=C bond was performed as a model reaction. Firstly, three different homogeneous Ru-BINAP complexes including [RuCl2((R)-BINAP)], [RuCl((R)-BINAP)(p-cymene)]Cl and [RuCl((R)-BINAP)(Benzene)]Cl were immobilized on the PTA-modified alumina. Reaction test of immobilized catalysts showed that [RuCl2((R)-BINAP)] was the most active and selective so all the experiment were done using this catalyst afterwards.

---