Pyrrolidines enamine catalysis

Enamines formed in this way may be distilled or used in situ. The ease of formation of the enamine depends on the structure of the secondary amine as well as the structure of the ketone. Thus pyrrolidine reacts faster than morpholine or piperidine, as expected from a rate-controlling transition state with imonium character. Six-membered ring ketones without a substituents form pyrrolidine enamines even at room temperature in methanol (20), and morpholine enamines are generated in cold acetic acid (21), but a-alkylcyclohexanones, cycloheptanone, and linear ketones react less readily. In such examples acid catalysis with p-toluenesulfonic acid or... 

L-Prolinamides (71) with a pendant alcohol act as recoverable bifunctional catalysts of direct nitro-Michael addition of ketones to -nitrostyrenes, giving syn-de s up to 94% and ees up to 80%.204 The pyrrolidine provides enamine catalysis, and the side-chain donors can hydrogen-bond the nitro oxygens. 

Kokotos and coworkers investigated the use of prolinamide-based thioureas as bifunctional organocatalysts for the direct aldol reaction. The amide and the thiourea functionalities, tethered by a chiral diamine motif, offered multiple hydrogen bonding sites for electrophile activation, while the pyrrolidine skeleton served to activate the nucleophile via enamine catalysis. Thiourea 61 proved to provide the best catalyst in the presence of 4-nitrobenzoic acid as cocatalyst at low temperature and delivered the anti-aXAoX products in moderate to high yields and in high to excellent... 

The first organocatalytic asymmetric Michael addition of unmodified aldehydes with nitroalkenes was reported by Barbas and co-workers [4]. In light of the concept of enamine catalysis, many chiral amines have been screened and (5)-2-(morpho-linomethyl)pyrrolidine 1 (Scheme 5.1) proved to be an effective catalyst to furnish the 7-formyl nitro products in high yields (up to 96%) with moderate enantiose-lectivity (up to 78%). Encouraged by this pioneering research on using chiral secondary... 

Enantioselective organocatalytic a-chlorination of aldehydes, via enamine catalysis, was independently reported by the groups of MacMillan and Jprgensen in 2004 (Scheme 13.20) [46, 47]. MacMillan utilized his imidazolidinone catalyst and a perchlorinated quinone as the chlorine source, to obtain the S-enantiomer of the a-chloroaldehyde products. Jprgensen employed NCS as the chlorine source, and either a prolinamide catalyst to access the / -enantiomer of the a-chloroaldehyde products, or a Ci-symmetric amine catalyst to access the 5-enantiomer. A recyclable fluorous pyrrolidine-thiourea bifunctional organocatalyst was later employed as an enamine catalyst in this transformation [48]. 

The a-alkylation of carbonyl compounds is a key carbon-carbon bond forming reaction in organic chemistry. Despite the widespread apphcations of this method, a general asymmetric intramolecular a-alkylation via enamine catalysis has proven to be extremely challenging because of catalyst alkylation, or racemization of products in the reaction. List and coworkers developed an intramolecular a-alkylation of aldehydes by using (S)-a-methylproline (15) as the catalyst [10]. To eliminate the influence of the by-product HX, a stoichiometric amount of NEts was added. A diversity of chiral cyclopentanes and pyrrolidines 17, or cyclopropanes 19, could be obtained in high yields and ees (Scheme 36.5). 

In 2005, J0rgensen and co-workers introduced 1-benzyl-sulfanyl[ 1,2,4] triazole 416 as an electrophilic sulfur source for the catalytic enantioselective a-sulfenylation of aldehydes (Scheme 46.47). ° The products 418 were obtained in high yields and excellent enantioselectivities, and more importantly, these products obtained by enamine catalysis were not racemized by the action of a chiral pyrrolidine catalyst 417. 

Enamines are not easily formed from 17-ketones. A pyrrolidine enam-ine is obtained by acid catalysis accompanied by azeotropic removal of water whereas the morpholine and piperidine enamines do not form under these forcing conditions. 

In addition, acid cocatalysts can assist the formation of the enamine. With very basic, nucleophilic amines, such as pyrrolidine and its derivatives, acid catalysis is not necessarily required for enamine formation. However, with less basic amines, Brpnsted or Lewis acids are often used to assist in enamine formation (Scheme 7). 

The majority of the Michael-type conjugate additions are promoted by amine-based catalysts and proceed via an enamine or iminium intermediate species. Subsequently, Jprgensen et al. [43] explored the aza-Michael addition of hydra-zones to cyclic enones catalyzed by Cinchona alkaloids. Although the reaction proceeds under pyrrolidine catalysis via iminium activation of the enone, and also with NEtj via hydrazone activation, both methods do not confer enantioselectivity to the reaction. Under a Cinchona alkaloid screen, quinine 3 was identified as an effective aza-Michael catalyst to give 92% yield and 1 3.5 er (Scheme 4). 

Notwithstanding the progress in other reaction types, the main thrust in organo-catalysis research centers is on enantioselective catalysis applications [109,110], of which amine-based asymmetric catalysts form the majority [111]. Most of the reactions proceed via the enamine catalytic cycle (Figure 3.38a) or via imonium intermediates. The most common (and most successful) catalysts for such reactions are proline derivatives. Thanks to its secondary amine functionality and relatively high pKa value, proline (pyrrolidine-2-carboxylic acid) is a good... 

Enamines derived from relatively reactive amines, such as pyrrolidine and sterically unhindered cyclic ketones, are formed rapidly either with or without acid catalysis ... 

The rates of hydrolysis of compounds 12 (X = H), 13 and 14 are independent of pH from about pH 6 to 1, and buffer catalysis is not seen. The interpretation of these results is the same as it is for series 5, namely rate-controlling attack by water on the iminium ion. At these pH values the enamine is present in a protonated form and equation 23 is the rate law. As is clear from Figure 2, the morpholine-derived iminium ion is by far the most electrophilic, while the pyrrolidine iminium ion is least reactive. This order is exactly the same as for compounds 1-3 the reasons were discussed in Section II1.A.2. Rate constants for nucleophilic attack upon the iminium ions are given in Table 8. 

Proline is a stable, nontoxic, cyclic, secondary pyrrolidine-based amino acid with an increased pK value. Thus, proline is a chiral bidentate compound that can form catalytically active metal complexes (Melchiorre et al. 2008). Bidentate means that proline has not only one tooth but also a second one to bite and react. The greatest difference to other amino acids is a Lewis-base type catalysis that facilitates iminium and enamine-based reactions. It is especially noteworthy that cross-aldol condensations of unprotected glycoladehyde and racemic glyceralde-hyde in the presence of catalytic amounts of the Zn-(proline)2 gave a mixture of pentoses and hexoses (Kofoed et al. 2004). Again, proline seems to play the decisive role. The conditions are prebiotic the reaction proceeded in water for seven days at room temperature. It is remarkable that the pentose products contained ribose (34%), lyxose (32%), arabinose (21%), and xylose (12%) and that all are stable under the conditions. Thus, the diastereomeric and enantiomeric selection observed support the idea that amino acids have been the source of chirality for prebiotic sugar synthesis. 

Enamines. Recently, two laboratories have reported that the classical method for preparation of enamines (pyrrolidine, p-TsOH catalysis, 1,972) failed... 

An alternative and useful method for intramolecular conjugate addition when the Michael donor is a ketone is the formation of an enamine and its reaction with a Michael acceptor. This can be advantageous as enamine formation occurs under reversible conditions to allow the formation of the product of greatest thermodynamic stability. Treatment of the ketone 40 with pyrrolidine and acetic acid leads to the bicyclic product 41, formed by reaction of only one of the two possible regio-isomeric enamines (1.51). Such reactions can be carried out with less than one equivalent of the secondary amine and have recently been termed organo-catalysis (as opposed to Lewis acid catalysis with a metal salt). The use of chiral secondary amines can promote asymmetric induction (see Section 1.1.4). 

L-Proline could be used as an effective catalyst via dual-enamine-iminium-catalysis modes. Pyrrolidine was ineffective, indicative of the crucial role of proline s carboigrlate moiety. The Meldrum s acid derivatives could be postfunctionalised via methanolysis and in situ decarboig lation to produce complex 1,5-dicarbonyl compounds. This strategy was applied towards the synthesis of polycyclic chromene derivatives (38, Scheme 5.43). ... 

Extension of the enamine-mediated carbonyl a-amination strategy to the generation of quaternary stereogenic centers at the a-position of a-branched aldehydes under catalysis by prohne 1 [8, 9], pyrrolidine tetrazole 3 [10, 11], or L-azetidin-2-carboxylic acid 4 [8] has also been explored (Table 11.1). The observed enantio-selectivities ranged from essentially none to >99%. Derivatives of 2-phenylpropanal gave better enantioselectivities than a,a-dialkyl substituted aldehydes. Erase and coworkers [11] employed microwave irradiation to accelerate the rate of proline-catalyzed amination, and found that yields as well as enantioselectivity can be somewhat improved with shorter reaction times. It appears that the pyrrolidine tetrazol 3 was a more effective catalyst than L-proline 1 for the amination of 2-phenylpropanal derivatives [10,11]. Subsequent reduction of adducts and cyclization could be carried out to afford the respective a-amino alcohols or the A-amino-oxazolidinones. 

Iminium-based organocatalysis is somewhat less explored than enamine-based organocatalysis and has been mostly used in the activation of a,/S-conjugated aldehydes and ketones. Therefore, this type of catalysis has unsurprisingly been the subject of a limited number of studies under the umbrella of the metal-organic cooperative catalysis concept. In 2011, the Cdrdova group [55] reported the first enantioselective and chemoselective /3-silyl addition to a./S-unsaturated aldehydes using copper salts and chiral pyrrolidine derivatives as catalysts. As proposed, the chiral secondary amine forms an iminium salt with... 

Enamines of cyclohexylamine have been enantioselectively cyclized to bicyclo[3.3.1] nonanedione systems, using acryloyl chloride and chiral pyrrolidine catalysis. Enantio-pure A-sulflnylimines have been used in asymmetric synthesis of isoquinolone alkaloids, and a stereocontrolled synthesis of 3,4,5,6-tetrahydropyrimidine-based amino acids from imino ethers has been reported. Diastereoselective additions of chiral acetals of (2-lithiophenyl)acetaldehyde to arylimines have been used in an asymmetric synthesis of 1-aryltetrahydroisoquinolines. " Organolithiums react with chiral imines, in the presence of Lewis acids or bases, to give amines in up to 100% de. Diastereoselective additions of copper reagents to imines derived from (5)-l-phenylethylamine have been reported. 

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