Pummerer rearrangement asymmetric reaction

Recently, new examples of asymmetric induction in the Pummerer reaction of chiral sulfoxides have been described. Oae and Numata (301) reported that the optically active a-cyanomethyl p-tolyl sulfoxide 275 undergoes a typical Pummerer rearrangement upon heating with excess of acetic anhydride at 120°C, to give the optically active a-acetoxy sulfide 276. The optical purity at the chiral a-carbon center in 276, determined by means of H- NMR spectroscopy using a chiral shift reagent, was 29.8%. 

Asymmetric Pummerer rearrangement is a very attractive reaction as previously described. In particular, the reactions induced by SKA work well, and may be synthetically exploited in many cases. The results described here demonstrate that the stereoselective a-deprotonation of the sulfoxide is a prerequisite process for asymmetric induction in the Pummerer reaction. Since many kinds of synthetic and enzymatic preparative methods of optically pure sulfoxides have been developed, the present Pummerer-type reaction will be applicable to many other chiral sulfoxides with one a-substituent, chiral vinylsulfoxides and chiral co-carbamoylsulfox-ides, thus leading to enantioselective syntheses of many new bioactive compounds in the near future. 

This isolated example which echoes the hydrazone work of Enders ( SAMP and RAMP ) no doubt illustrates a more widely applicable principle. Closely related organotin enamines afford the same product (172) with acrylates but usually in poorer chemical and optical yields.A first example of an asymmetric additive Pummerer rearrangement, (173)— (174), an uncommon reaction in its racemic form, is featured in a new route to the 6-keto-ester, (-)-methyl jasmonate (175), having ca. 20% enantiomeric purity (Scheme 13). 

As previously described, the effect of substituent groups on the silyi function is an important factor in terms of determining the reaction course. Table 4 shows the ratio of the products in the Pummerer reaction using various SKAs.33 These results suggest that carbon-carbon bond formation preferentially occurs when using a small silyi function such as the trimethylsilyl function. This tendency was observed in another substrate which has asymmetric carbon at the (3-position of the sulfur atom (Table 5).33 Interestingly, the syn-selectivity of the rearrangement product... 

The Pummerer reaction, whose key step is a [2,3]-sigmatropic rearrangement, has never been observed to lead to efficient transfer of chirality starting from chiral sulfoxides in the presence of acetic anhydride [1632, 1633], A modification via silyloxysulfides, generated with O-methyl-OTBDMS ketene acetal at 65°C, allows asymmetric silicon-induced Pummerer reaction from chiral sulfoxides 10.29 with a high chirality transfer [1634] (Figure 10.11). The ( S)-sulfoxides generate the (5)-secondary ethers and vice-versa. 

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