Prolines secondary amine catalysts

Highly enantioselective organocatalytic Mannich reactions of aldehydes and ketones have been extensively stndied with chiral secondary amine catalysts. These secondary amines employ chiral prolines, pyrrolidines, and imidazoles to generate a highly active enamine or imininm intermediate species [44], Cinchona alkaloids were previonsly shown to be active catalysts in malonate additions. The conjngate addition of malonates and other 1,3-dicarbonyls to imines, however, is relatively nnexplored. Snbseqnently, Schans et al. [45] employed the nse of Cinchona alkaloids in the conjngate addition of P-ketoesters to iV-acyl aldimines. Highly enantioselective mnltifnnctional secondary amine prodncts were obtained with 10 mol% cinchonine (Scheme 5). 

Nevertheless, as was pointed out before, a straightforward solution to the rather limited substrate scope of the reaction with regard to the ketone reagent and also a good way to overcome the lack of reactivity of ketones toward enamine activation has been the use of primary amines as organocatalysts. In fact, literature examples indicate that primary amines are much more active catalysts for the Michael addition of both cyclic and acyclic ketones to nitroalkenes compared to the same reaction using a secondary amine catalyst like most of the proline-based derivatives already presented before. 

In 2003 Barbas III et al reported the direct organocatalytic asymmetric Mannich reaction of aliphatic aldehydes with a-imino ethyl glyo grlates and tested several chiral secondary amine catalysts, among which only (S)-pro-line (1), (25,4J )-4-hydrmy-proline (trans-4) and trans-12 gave high catalytic activities and very high stereoselectivities (Scheme 11.9). ... 

FIGURE 8.1. Proline-derived catalyst h%l LXII and silicon-based secondary amine catalyst LVIII. 

The efficiency of secondary amine catalysts is often eroded when moving from aldehydes to ketones as the donor carbonyl substrates, a trend that can be explained in terms of either the greater difficulty in the generation of the intermediate enamine species or their attenuated reactivity. To alleviate this situation, primary amines have emerged as a complementary family of amine catalysts. For instance, proline and related chiral secondary amines are not useful catalysts for the a-amination of aromatic enolizable ketones. As in other similar situations involving ketones as substrates, primary amines proved to be superior catalysts, although in these cases the presence of an acid co-catalyst seems to be crucial for reactivity. For instance (Scheme 11.4), primary amines derived from cinchona alkaloids can efficiently... 

Since the discovery of proline-catalyzed enantioselective aldol reactions, an extensive research program to explore chiral secondary amine catalysts has been pursued. Several polymer-supported chiral amines have been synthesized for aldol, Mannich, and related reactions. Polystyrene is a popular solid phase for use in place of silica gel in the proline-based organocatalysis. In contrast, silica gel displays a slightly acidic character and has a hydrogen-bond donor or acceptor, which may change the catalytic activity and chiral space of the organocatalyst. Flow enantioselective aldol [158-161], Mannich [162], Michael [163], and related reactions... 

Proline-Related Secondary Amine Catalysts and Applications... 

S)-proline-catalyzed reaction is not sufficient therefore, a large number of (S)-proline-derived secondary amine catalysts have been developed. Primary amine catalysts derived from natural amino acids and cinchona alkaloids have also emerged as highly versatile and powerful catalysts [25]. For example, in the intramolecular 6-endo aldol reaction of diketone 43, quinine-derived primary amine 44 in acetic acid affords the cyclic ketone (S)-46 in 94% yield with 90% ee (Scheme 28.3) (S)-prohne gives the cycUzation product in low yield with moderate ee. In addition, the pseudo-enantiomeric quinidine-derived primary amine 45 deUvers the opposite product, the (R)-enantiomer 46, with similar yield and enantioselectivity [26]. 

Very recently, Lin et al. reported a cascade aminoxylation/aza-Michael/aldol condensation reaction by combining two distinct secondary amine catalysts [23], The (Si-proline was nsed to serve as an enamine catalyst, while the Jprgensen-Hayashi catalyst was exploited to generate achiral imininm ion toward anncleophilic attack (Scheme 9.26). 

---