Reductions of Carboxylic Acid Derivatives to Aldehydes

The aldehyde intermediate can be isolated if 1 equivalent of diisobutvl-aluminum hydride (D1BAH) is used as the reducing agent instead of LiAlH4. The reaction has to be carried out at -78 °C to avoid further reduction to the alcohol. Such partial reductions of carboxylic acid derivatives to aldehydes also occur in numerous biological pathways, although the substrate is either a thioester or acyl phosphate rather than an ester. 

Of the several methods now available for the reduction of carboxylic acid derivatives to aldehydes, all require careful control of conditions to avoid ovorreduetion or underreduetion. The procedure described here is particularly convenient in that... 

Acylation of Hydride Donors Reduction of Carboxylic Acid Derivatives to Aldehydes... 

Complex or soluble neutral metal hydrides are usually employed for the reduction of carboxylic acid derivatives to alcohols or amines. The standard reagents for the most important transformations are shown in Table 17.6. For completeness, various reagents also are listed for the reduction of carboxylic acid derivatives to aldehydes. The latter mode of reduction was discussed in Section 6.5.2. 

There have been two major approaches towards achieving selective reduction of carboxylic acid derivatives to aldehydes (or derivatives) by hydrides. Firstly, hydride reagents themselves have been modified as, for example, sodium borohydride and sodium cyanoborohydride. Sometimes these modifications have led to finely tuned reducing agents, as with the dimethyl sulfide adduct of thexylbromoborane (see later). Secondly, the type of carboxylic acid derivative has been modified for the optimum yield of aldehyde. For example, amides have been made from an assortment of amines in efforts to maximize yields of aldehyde. Best yields of aldehydes are obtained usually by a combination of modified hydride reagent with a modified carboxylic acid derivative. 

Aldehydes are intermediate ill oxidation level, and thus the aldehyde functional group can be installed by either reduction of carboxylic acid derivatives or oxidation of alcohols. Aldehydes are rarely installed without a change of oxidation level. One difficulty is that they undergo both oxidation and reduction readily. Special methods are required to stop at the aldehyde stage rather than proceeding by further reduction or oxidation. 

Aldehydes. The reduction of carboxylic acid derivatives such as esters and nitriles is stopped at the aldehyde stage with the modified sodium aluminum hydride. The reagent is prepared from NaAlH2Et2 and piperidine in THF-toluene at 0°C. Interestingly, acid chlorides can be converted to aldehydes by treatment with piperidine and then with NaAlH2Et2- ... 

Carbonyl Group Reduction. The flow of new methods for reduction of acid derivatives and aldehydes or ketones to alcohols continues unabated. The Report last year (4,134) featured the sodium borohydride reduction of carboxylic acid derivatives, originally thought to be 2-thiazoline-2-thiol esters (14), to give alcohols in good yields. Full details of the method have now appeared (Scheme 8), and it seems that the acid derivatives are in fact the 3-acyl thiazolidine-2-thiones (IS) dissappearance of their yellow colour is an easy way to monitor the reduction. Carboxylic acids or their chlorides can also be reduced to primary alcohols in good yields at room temperature using a titanium tetrachloride-sodium borohydride combination. ... 

One of the more difficult partial reductions to accomplish is the conversion of a carboxylic acid derivative to an aldehyde without over-reduction to the alcohol. Aldehydes are inherently more reactive than acids or esters so the challenge is to stop the reduction at the aldehyde stage. Several approaches have been used to achieve this objective. One is to replace some of the hydrogens in a group III hydride with more bulky groups, thus modifying reactivity by steric factors. Lithium tr i - / - b u to x y a I u m i n u m hydride is an example of this approach.42 Sodium tri-t-butoxyaluminum hydride can also be used to reduce acyl chlorides to aldehydes without over-reduction to the alcohol.43 The excellent solubility of sodium bis(2-methoxyethoxy)aluminum hydride makes it a useful reagent for selective... 

As illustrated in Figure 19.7, the reduction of an acid derivative, such as an ester, with lithium aluminum hydride produces an aldehyde as an intermediate. Reduction of the aldehyde gives a primary alcohol as the ultimate product. It would be useful to be able to stop such a reduction at the aldehyde stage so that an aldehyde could be prepared directly from a carboxylic acid derivative. 

The usual range of carboxylic acid derivatives can be prepared and interconverted. Both carboxylic acid and ester functions are capable of reduction by lithium aluminum hydride to alcohols, or by controlled potential reduction to aldehydes. Attempts to form the anhydride from imidazole-4,5-dicarboxylic acid by heating with acetic anhydride failed. Instead, compound (199) is formed. This product forms the monoester (200) when heated with methanol and the hydrazide (201) when treated similarly with hydrazine (Scheme 107) (75S162). The corresponding l-methyl-4,5-dicarboxylic acid loses the 4-carboxyl group when heated with acetic anhydride, but in boiling aniline it is transformed into the 1-methyl-4-carboxanilide (79H(12)186). 

Alane (AIH3) and its derivatives have also been utilized in the reduction of carboxylic acids to primary alcohols. It rapidly reduces aldehydes, ketones, acid chlorides, lactones, esters, carboxylic acids and salts, tertiary amides, nitriles and epoxides. In contrast, nitro compounds and alkenes are slow to react. AIH3 is particularly useful for the chemoselective reduction of carboxylic acids containing halogen or nitro substituents, to produce the corresponding primary alcohols. DIBAL-H reduces aliphatic or aromatic carboxylic acids to produce either aldehydes (-75 °C) or primary alcohols (25 C) Aminoalu-minum hydrides are less reactive reagents and are superior for aldehyde synthesis. ... 

Until about 1950, reduction of carboxylic acids and their derivatives to aldehydes was not straightforward, and even one of the best methods, the Rosenmund hydrogenation of acid chlorides, required very careful control of both the reaction conditions and preparation of catalyst. The advent of aluminum and boron hydrides and their ready commercial availability transformeKl the situation to such an extent that the formation of aldehydes from carboxylic acids, acid chlorides, esters, amides, nitriles and similar groups in the presence of other reducible functional groups has become a relatively easy operation on both small and large scale. 

Several related reactions involve reduction of cyclic carboxylic acid derivatives to masked aldehydes which resist further reduction but can be converted into the required aldehydes by acid hydrolysis. In a series of papers, it was established that carboxylic acids could be converted into dihydro-1,3-thiazines or dihydro-1,3-oxazines which could be reduced by NaBH4 in weakly acidic ethanol. Thus, as shown in Scheme 20, dihydro-1,3-thiazines (41) were reduced to tetrahydro-1,3-thiazines (42) in yields of 66-84%. The resulting tetrahydro compounds could be hydrolyzed to aldehydes by aqueous acid. - In a later publication, these workers showed that there was little evidence for ring opening during reduction and that other methods of reduction e.g. hydrogenation over Pt, Pd or Rh or use of dissolving metals such as Zn, Sn or Na) were totally unsuccessful. In closely similar work, reduction of 5,6-dihydro-4W-... 

The central problem in the reduction of carboxylic acids and their derivatives to aldehydes is the avoidance of overreduction to primary alcohols. The difficulty is particularly acute when, as in the case of the carboxylic acids themselves, the substrates are not especially reactive towards reducing agents. Thus there are few nonhydride methods of reducing carboxylic acids to aldehydes, and none which are routinely used. Those which are available generally have some specific feature which results in the trapping or protection of the product aldehydes. 

Reduction of saturated carboxylic acids with the borane derivative, thexylchloro-borane, provides a direct route to aldehydes without their prior conversion to carboxylic acid derivatives. The aldehydes initially formed were isolated either as their bisulfite adducts or as their hydrazones, from which the aldehydes were regenerated. 

However, the in vivo reduction of aldehydes by this enzyme is not normally a quantitatively important reaction because aldehydes are rapidly oxidized to their corresponding carboxylic acid derivatives by aldehyde dehydrogenase. Alcohol dehydrogenase is a very important enzyme for the metabolism of ethanol. 

Side reactions such as double-bond migration and others are observed, similar to hydroformylation. Mechanistically, hydrocarboxylation is related to hydroformylation up until the metal acyl formation stage13. The presence of an acidic compound shifts the reaction towards formation of carboxylic acid derivatives and suppresses reductive elimination which forms aldehydes. The mechanism of the final steps is unclear13. 

Reduction of acids or esters to aldehydes. Diaminoaluminum hydrides, particularly those derived from secondary cyclic amines such as N-methyl-piperazine or morpholine, are useful for reduction of carboxylic acids or esters to aldehydes, without contamination by the corresponding alcohols. The reduction is carried out in refluxing THF (6-20 hr.). In general, 2 moles of reagent are used for each mole of substrate. The reduction is applicable to both aromatic and aliphatic esters. Yields are in the range of 50-85%,... 

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