Secondary amines, from reductive alkylation amination

Reductive amination of cyclohexanone using primary and secondary aHphatic amines provides A/-alkylated cyclohexylamines. Dehydration to imine for the primary amines, to endocycHc enamine for the secondary amines is usually performed in situ prior to hydrogenation in batch processing. Alternatively, reduction of the /V-a1ky1ani1ines may be performed, as for /V,/V-dimethy1 cyclohexyl amine from /V, /V- di m e th y1 a n i1 i n e [121 -69-7] (12,13). One-step routes from phenol and the alkylamine (14) have also been practiced. 

A -Nitroso derivatives, prepared from secondary amines and nitrous acid, are cleaved by reduction (H2/Raney Ni, EtOH, 28°, 3.5 h CuCl/concd. HCl"). Since many V-nitroso compounds are carcinogens, and because some racemization and cyclodehydration of V-nitroso derivatives of V-alkyl amino acids occur during peptide syntheses, V-nitroso derivatives are of limited value as protective groups. 

Several syntheses of muraghtazar (3) have appeared in patents (Cheng et al.) and journals (Devasthale et al., 2005) (Scheme 8.3). Alkylation of 4-hydroxybenzaldehyde with the phenyloxazolemesylate 23, prepared readily from commercially available alcohol 22, yielded aldehyde 24, which was treated with glycine methyl ester under reductive amination conditions to provide secondary amine 25 in excellent yield. Reaction of amine 25 with 4-methoxyphenyl chloroformate followed by hydrolysis of the methyl ester afforded 3 in 94% yield. 

Reductive alkylation is an efficient method to synthesize secondary amines from primary amines. The aim of this study is to optimize sulfur-promoted platinum catalysts for the reductive alkylation of p-aminodiphenylamine (ADPA) with methyl isobutyl ketone (MIBK) to improve the productivity of N-(l,3-dimethylbutyl)-N-phenyl-p-phenylenediamine (6-PPD). In this study, we focus on Pt loading, the amount of sulfur, and the pH as the variables. The reaction was conducted in the liquid phase under kinetically limited conditions in a continuously stirred tank reactor at a constant hydrogen pressure. Use of the two-factorial design minimized the number of experiments needed to arrive at the optimal solution. The activity and selectivity of the reaction was followed using the hydrogen-uptake and chromatographic analysis of products. The most optimal catalyst was identified to be l%Pt-0.1%S/C prepared at a pH of 6. 

The reduction is usually effected catalytically in ethanol solution using hydrogen under pressure in the presence of Raney nickel. As in the reduction of nitriles (Section 5.16.1, p. 771), which also involves the intermediate imine, ammonia or the amines should be present in considerable excess to minimise the occurrence of undesirable side reactions leading to the formation of secondary and tertiary amines. These arise from the further reaction of the carbonyl compound with the initially formed amine product. Selected experimental conditions for these reductive alkylation procedures have been well reviewed.210 Sodium borohydride has also been used as an in situ reducing agent and is particularly effective with mixtures of primary amines and aliphatic aldehydes and ketones.211... 

Secondary amines can be prepared from the primary amine and carbonyl compounds by way of the reduction of the derived Schiff bases, with or without the isolation of these intermediates. This procedure represents one aspect of the general method of reductive alkylation discussed in Section 5.16.3, p. 776. With aromatic primary amines and aromatic aldehydes the Schiff bases are usually readily isolable in the crystalline state and can then be subsequently subjected to a suitable reduction procedure, often by hydrogenation over a Raney nickel catalyst at moderate temperatures and pressures. A convenient procedure, which is illustrated in Expt 6.58, uses sodium borohydride in methanol, a reagent which owing to its selective reducing properties (Section 5.4.1, p. 519) does not affect other reducible functional groups (particularly the nitro group) which may be present in the Schiff base contrast the use of sodium borohydride in the presence of palladium-on-carbon, p. 894. 

Starting from TV-o-Fmoc-aspartic acid a-f-butylester, a wide range of 1,3,4,7-tetrasubstituted perhydro-l,4-diazepine-2,5-diones 3 were synthesized (Fig. 2).28 After deprotection of the aspartic acid amino function and reductive alkylation, a second amino acid was coupled and a second reductive alkylation was carried out. Following fBu cleavage, the thermodynamically favorable coupling of the resulting secondary amine to the side chain of aspartic acid was readily accomplished. 

Even if the imine may not be isolated, the transient species may sometimes be trapped by reaction with a suitable nucleophile. This is the basis of the reductive amination reaction in which an amine is formed from the reaction of ammonia with a carbonyl compound in the presence of a reducing agent such as sodium borohydride or formate. Use of a primary or secondary amine results in the specific formation of secondary or tertiary amines respectively (Fig. 5-45). This synthetic method allows the preparation of high yields of amines, in contrast to the unselective and uncontrollable reaction of alkylating agents with amines. A specific example involving the preparation of a-phenylethylamine from acetophenone is presented in Fig. 5-46. 

The synthesis of secondary amines from azides is efficient in terms of chemos-electivity [57] and has found valuable applications in the preparation of diamines [58,59], m-alkylaminoboronic esters [60], and in Diels-Alder-based amination reactions [61]. A convenient general route to open-chain polyamines, which play major roles in cellular differentiation and proliferation, has also been developed using the reductive alkylation of aliphatic aminoazides by (co-halogenoalk-yi)dichloroboranes as a key step [62] (Scheme 21). 

Acylation-reduction converts ammonia to a primary amine, a primary amine to a secondary amine, or a secondary amine to a tertiary amine. These reactions are quite general, with one restriction The added alkyl group is always 1° because the carbon bonded to nitrogen is derived from the carbonyl group of the amide, reduced to a methylene (—CH2—) group. 

Reductive alkylation of ammonia may proceed under mild conditions over nickel catalysts. In examples using Raney Ni, temperatures ranging from 40 to 150°C and hydrogen pressures of 2-15 MPa have been used to obtain satisfactory results.3,4 In general, the reductive alkylation of ammonia with carbonyl compounds may produce primary, secondary, and tertiary amines, as well as an alcohol, a simple hydrogenation product of the carbonyl compound (Scheme 6.1). The selectivity to respective amine depends primarily on the molar ratio of the carbonyl compound to ammonia, although the nature of catalyst and structure of the carbonyl compound are also important factors for the selectivity. As an example, the reaction of benzaldehyde in the presence of 1 equiv of ammonia in ethanol over Raney Ni gave benzylamine in an 89.4% yield while with 0.5 molar equivalent of ammonia dibenzylamine was obtained in an 80.8% yield (eq. 6.1).4... 

In the reductive alkylation of ammonia with cyclohexanone, Skita and Keil found that, although cyclohexylamine was obtained in 50% yield over a nickel catalyst, over colloidal platinum dicyclohexylamine was produced as the predominant product even in the presence of an excess molar equivalent of ammonia. Steele and Rylander compared the selectivity to primary amine, secondary amine, and alcohol in the reductive alkylation of ammonia with 2- and 4-methylcyclohexanones over 5% Pd-, 5% Rh-, and 5% Ru-on-carbon as catalysts.18 As seen from the results shown in Table 6.2, the formation of secondary amine is greatly depressed by the methyl group at the 2 position. Thus over Pd-C the secondary amine was formed predominantly with cyclohexanone and 4-methylcyclohexanone while the primary amine was produced in 96% selectivity with 2-methylcyclohexanone. Over Ru-C the alcohol was formed quantitatively with 4-methylcyclohexanone without the formation of any amines, whereas with 2-methylcyclohexanone the alcohol was formed only to an extent of 57%, accompanied by the formation of 4 and 39% of the secondary and primary amines, respectively. These results indicate that secondary amine formation is affected by the steric hindrance of the methyl group to a much greater extents than is the formation of the primary amine or the alcohol. The results with Ru-C and Rh-C also indicate... 

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