Prochiral substrates, asymmetric

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. ... 

In all the examples of exodendrally functionalized enantioselective den-drimer catalysts, the active sites in the periphery of the support were well-defined immobilized molecular catalysts. An alternative is provided by the possibility of attaching chiral multi-functional molecules to the end groups of dendrimers which, due to their high local concentrations, may interact more or less strongly with an achiral reagent and thus induce enantioselectivity in a transformation of a prochiral substrate. Asymmetric induction thus occurs by way of a chiral functionalized microenvironment for a given reaction. 

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. 

The subject of asymmetric synthesis generally (214, 215) gained new momentum with the potential use of transition metal complexes as catalysts. The use of a complex with chiral ligands to catalyze a synthesis asymmetrically from a prochiral substrate is advantageous in that resolution of a normally obtained racemate product may be avoided, for example,... 

As outlined in Section II,E, ketone and imine groups are readily hydrogenated via a hydrosilylation-hydrolysis procedure. Use of chiral catalysts with prochiral substrates, for example, R,R2C=0 or R,R2C=N— leads to asymmetric hydrosilylation (284, 285 Chapter 9 in this volume) and hence optically active alcohols [cf. Eq. (41)]. 

Homogeneous enantioselective hydrogenation constitutes one of the most versatile and effective methods to convert prochiral substrates to valuable optically active products. Recent progress makes it possible to synthesize a variety of chiral compounds with outstanding levels of efficiency and enantioselectivity through the reduction of the C=C, C=N, and C=0 bonds. The asymmetric hydrogenation of functionalized C=C bonds, such as enamide substrates, provides access to various valuable products such as amino acids, pharmaceuticals, and... 

The asymmetric synthesis of allenes by stereoselective manipulations of enantio-merically pure or enriched substrates relies on the availability of such optically active substrates. In contrast, a direct synthesis of allenes by the reaction of prochiral substrates in the presence of an external asymmetric catalyst is an almost ideal process [102]. Most of the catalytic asymmetric syntheses in organic chemistry involve the creation of chiral tetrahedral carbon centers [103], whereas the asymmetric synthesis of allenes requires the construction of an axis of chirality. 

In asymmetric hydrogenation of olefins, the overwhelming majority of the papers and patents deal with hydrogenation of enamides or other appropriately substituted prochiral olefins. The reason is very simple hydrogenation of olefins with no coordination ability other than provided by the C=C double bond, usually gives racemic products. This is a common observation both in non-aqueous and aqueous systems. The most frequently used substrates are shown in Scheme 3.6. These are the same compounds which are used for similar studies in organic solvents salts and esters of Z-a-acetamido-cinnamic, a-acetamidoacrylic and itaconic (methylenesuccinic) acids, and related prochiral substrates. The free acids and the methyl esters usually show appreciable solubility in water only at higher temperatures, while in most cases the alkali metal salts are well soluble. 

Reetz and coworkers developed a highly efficient method for screening of enantioselectivity of asymmetrically catalyzed reactions of chiral or prochiral substrates using ESI-MS [60]. This method is based on the use of isotopically labeled substrates in the form of pseudo-enantiomers or pseudo-prochiral compounds. Pseudo-enantiomers are chiral compounds which are characterized by different absolute configurations and one of them is isotopically labeled. With these labeled compounds two different stereochemical processes are possible. The first is a kinetic separation of a racemic mixture, the second the asymmetric conversion of prochiral substrates with enantiotopic groups. The conversion can be monitored by measuring the relative amounts of substrates or products by electrospray mass spectrometry. Since only small amounts of sample are required for this method, reactions are easily carried out in microtiter plates. The combination of MS and the use of pseudo-enantiomers can be used for the investigation of different kinds of asymmetric conversion as shown in Fig. 3 [60]. 

Such oligocyclizations have also been carried out on prochiral substrates such as 132 with asymmetric induction by chiral ligands on palladium. With (spirocyclic system 133 was obtained in good yield with an enantiomeric excess (ee) of 45% (Scheme 35). ... 

In the preceding Section we considered the catalytic asymmetric synthesis. In this connection the induction of asymmetry by catalytic amounts of chiral information (= amino acids or their derivatives) was treated. The chiral information was transferred into a prochiral substrate. 

The asymmetric transamination from chiral a-amino acids 1021 and amino acid derivatives (57) (esters 86,103), amino alcohols 104 ) to carbonyl functions in prochiral substrates (58) (a-keto acids 102), a-keto esters 86,103), ketones 103b d) was described... 

Optically active homogeneous (as well as heterogeneous) catalysts have been used to achieve partially asymmetric (enantioselective) hydrogenations of certain prochiral substrates.232 For example,233 hydrogenation of 31 with a suitable catalyst gives (+ ) or (-) 32... 

A simple method for the hydrosolubilization of chiral diphosphines is the introduction of a functional group such as sulfonate. Such chiral-sulfonated diphosphines can be used to prepare homogeneous hydrogenation catalysts in situ for the asymmetric reduction of prochiral substrates.1... 

In addition to the glycinate Schiff base 1, glycine amide derivatives can be used as prochiral substrates for asymmetric alkylation under phase-transfer conditions. Kumar and Ramachandran examined the benzylation of various Schiff bases of... 

The rates of asymmetric sulfoxidation of thioanisole in nearly anhydrous (99.7%) isopropyl alcohol and methanol catalyzed by horseradish peroxidase (HRP) were determined to be tens to hundreds of times faster than in water under otherwise identical conditions (Dai, 2000). Similar effects were observed with other hemo-proteins. This dramatic activation is due to a much higher substrate solubility in organic solvents than in water and occurs even though the intrinsic reactivity of HRP in isopropyl alcohol and in methanol is hundreds of times lower than in water. In addition, the rates of spontaneous oxidation of the model prochiral substrate thioanisole in several organic solvents was observed to be some 100- to 1000-fold slower than in water. This renders peroxidase-catalyzed asymmetric sulf-oxidations synthetically attractive. 

Another example using a prochiral acetate and asymmetric hydrolysis was described by the Bristol-Myers Squibb group for an intermediate in the synthesis of Monopril (fosinopril sodium) (41), an ACE inhibitor (Scheme 19.23). The prochiral substrate 42 was hydrolyzed both when R = phenyl or cyclohexyl to the corresponding (S)-(-)-monoacetate 43. The reaction was carried out in a 10% toluene biphasic system with either PPL or Chromobacterium viscosum lipase. The cyclohexyl monoacetate was obtained in 90% yield with an optical purity of 99.8%.107 195... 

There are two common ways to accomplish an asymmetric reaction. Either a second chiral center is created in a molecule under the influence of an existing chiral center in that molecule or a chiral reagent acts on a prochiral substrate to create a new chiral center. The conversion of chiral a-keto esters to di-, astereomeric a-hydroxy esters is an example of the first type of asymmetric reaction, and the asymmetric hydroboration of alkenes with chiral boranes is an example of the second type (Fig. 1). 

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