Pyrrolidines, from aziridines

A direct and efficient route to imidazoline and pyrrolidine derivatives using copper(ll) triflate-mediated [3+2] cycloaddition of various aryl, alkyl, and cycloalkyl iV-tosylaziridines with nitriles and olefins as dipolarophiles has been reported <2006TL5399>. Formation of bicyclic imidazoline 334 with a /ra j-ring junction as a single product from aziridine 333 suggested that the reaction proceeded through an SN2-type pathway (Scheme 86). 

From aziridines. N-Tosylaziridines, easily obtained by aziridination of the corresponding alkenes, can be opened by selenolate reagents and furnish, after straightforward N-alkylation, radical precursors suitable for the preparation of pyrrolidine derivatives [12]. The preparation of octahydro-lff-indole 24 is shown in Eq. (4). A competing process involving radical azi-doselenenylation of alkenes has also been developed and will be discussed later (Sect. 5.2). 

Chiral azomethine ylides were prepared and used for the preparation of ferrocenyl-substituted pyrrolidines <2002TA2099>. Other enantiopure azomethine ylides were produced from aziridines by thermolysis <2001T71> and an enantiopure nitrile oxide was trapped by alkenes <2001GH629>. 

Schomaker JM, Bhattachaijee S, Yan J et al (2007) Diastereomerically and enantiomerically pure 2,3-disubstituted pyrrolidines from 2,3-aziridin-l-ols using a sulfoxonium ylide a one-carbon homologative relay ring expansion. J Am Chem Soc 129 1996-2003... 

Azomethine ylides are another class of powerful nitrogen-based 1,3-dipoles, which provide access to pyrrolidines. An illustration of their use in stereoselective synthesis [53] was reported by Takano, starting from aziridine 28 (Scheme 18.7) [54]. Thermally induced electrocyclic ring-opening generated dipole 29 in situ, which then participated in a stereospecific cycloaddition process to give 30 in >95 5 dr. This key intermediate was subsequently transformed into acromelic acid A (31), an amino acid with important neurochemical properties. 

Azomethine ylides (Section 4.03.6.1.1) have been generated from a wide variety of aziridines using both thermal and photochemical methods. With carbon-carbon unsaturated dipolarophiles, pyrrolines or pyrrolidines are obtained. With hetero double bonds, however, ring systems of interest to this discussion result. 

Reduction of iV-(3-bromopropyl) imines gives a bromo-amine in situ, which cyclizes to the aziridine. Five-membered ring amines (pyrrolidines) can be prepared from alkenyl amines via treatment with N-chlorosuccinimide (NCS) and then BusSnH. " Internal addition of amine to allylic acetates, catalyzed by Pd(PPh3)4, leads to cyclic products via a Sn2 reaction. Acyclic amines can be prepared by a closely related reaction using palladium catalysts. Three-membered cyclic amines (aziridines)... 

When the reaction is conducted in the presence of added fumarate, the yield of pyrrolidine (130) increases at the expense of the aziridine. Jacobsen suggests that the aziridines and pyrrolidines arise from a common intermediate, azo-methine ylide (132), Scheme 6, which may also be partly responsible for the poor levels of asymmetric induction in this reaction. Electrocyclic ring closure of the azo-methine while still within the coordination sphere of the metal (131) may provide aziridine with some induction, while decomplexation (132) will lead to the formation of racemic aziridine and pyrrolidine. 

Better reagents than lithium aluminum hydride alone are its alkoxy derivatives, especially di- and triethoxyaluminohydrides prepared in situ from lithium aluminum hydride and ethanol in ethereal solutions. The best of all, lithium triethoxyaluminohydride, gave higher yields than its trimethoxy and tris(/er/-butoxy) analogs. When an equimolar quantity of this reagent was added to an ethereal solution of a tertiary amide derived from dimethylamine, diethylamine, W-methylaniline, piperidine, pyrrolidine, aziridine or pyrrole, and the mixture was allowed to react at 0° for 1-1.5 hours aldehydes were isolated in 46-92% yields [95,1107], The reaction proved unsuccessful for the preparation of crotonaldehyde and cinnamaldehyde from the corresponding dimethyl amides [95]. 

Similarly, Takano et al. (79) reported the intramolecular, asymmetric cycloaddition of ylides derived from thermal decomposition of aziridines 255 with the stereoselectivity rationalized by the formation of a postulated nine-membered transition state 256 in which the benzyloxymethyl group was forced into an equatorial disposition. The resultant pyrrolidine 257 contained three new stereo-genic centers, each imposed with high control (Scheme 3.87). 

Chiral aziridines having the chiral moiety attached to the nitrogen atom have also been applied for diastereoselective formation of optically active pyrrolidine derivatives. In the first example, aziridines were used as precursors for azomethine ylides (90-95). Photolysis of the aziridine 57 produced the azomethine ylide 58, which was found to add smoothly to methyl acrylate (Scheme 12.20) (91,93-95). The 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition proceeded with little or no de, but this was not surprising, as the chiral center in 58 is somewhat remote from the reacting centers... 

Aziridines can add to carbon—carbon multiple bonds. Elevated temperature and alkali metal catalysis are required in the case of nonpolarized double bonds (193—195). On the other hand, the addition of aziridines onto the conjugated polarized double or triple bonds of a,p-unsaturated nitriles (196—199), ketones (197,200), esters (201—205), amides (197), sulfones (206—209), or quinones (210—212) in a Michael addition-type reaction frequendy proceeds even at room temperature without a catalyst. The adducts obtained from the reaction of aziridines with a,p-unsaturated ketones, eg, 4-aziridinyl-2-butanone [503-12-8] from 3-buten-2-one, can be converted to 1,3-substituted pyrrolidines by subsequent ring opening with acyl chlorides and alkaline cyclization (213). 

Unactivated dipolarophiles readily participate in intramolecular azomethine ylide cycloadditions with a more reactive azomethine ylide. Thus, flash vacuum pyrolysis of aziridine (113) afforded a 67% yield of the 5,5-fused bicyclic pyrrolidine (Scheme 34).59 A singly stabilized azomethine ylide was the apparent intermediate. Similarly, cyclization of the azomethine ylides derived from (114a-c) gave the corresponding cw-fused 6,6-bicyclic pyrrolidines in 69%, 26% and 16% yield, respectively the original double bond stereochemistry was retained in the latter two cases. 

Triazolines bearing three electron-withdrawing groups (Scheme 85) undergo complex thermolysis reactions. Aziridine formation is observed but sometimes the azide cycloreversion operates pyrrolidines are thus formed by reaction of the olefins with the azomethine ylides from the aziridines. The aziridines also dimerize to piperazines under the conditions of thermolysis.446... 

The chemistry of ammonium ylides formed from the reaction of cyclic amines with carbenes was found to be dependent on the ring size of the amine.52 For example, treatment of 1-benzylazetidine (104) with ethyl diazoacetate in the presence of a copper (II) catalyst afforded pyrrolidine 106 in 96% yield. This result is consistent with ammonium ylide formation followed by ring expansion. In contrast, treatment of 1 -phenethylaz-iridine (107) under identical conditions gave the fragmentation product 109 in quantitative yield. Similar results were observed for the reaction of aziridine 107 with dichlorocarbene.53 On the other hand, reaction of 1-phenethylpyrrolidine with ethyl diazoacetate in the presence of a... 

We have just mentioned the protonation of aziridine, and you might imagine from what we said earlier about the comparative nucleophilicity and basicity of nitrogen heterocycles and their acyclic counterparts that aziridine will be even more nucleophilic than pyrrolidine, and about as basic. Well,... 

The inversion barriers for compounds 59 (ca. 26—27 kcal/mole) and 71 (ca. 30— 32 kcal/mole) have been estimated from the values obtained for diaziridines and oxaziridines (Table 3) and from a study of substituent effects in pyrrolidines 68>. From Fig. 4 barriers of ca. 40 and 18—20 kcal/mole may be estimated for N-fluoro aziridines and N-fluoro pyrrolidines respectively. 

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