Sulfoxides, allylic reagents

The allyl sulfoxide-allyl sulfenate rearrangement can be used to prepare allylic alcohols.275 The reaction is carried out in the presence of a reagent, such as phenylthi-olate or trimethyl phosphite, that reacts with the sulfenate to cleave the S—O bond. 

More recently it was found that methyl sulfide-iV-chlorosuccin-imide in toluene at 0°C gives good yields of ketones by the oxidation of primary and secondary alcohols. However, allylic and dibenzylic alcohols give halides. The latter alcohols can be oxidized to ketones with a dimethyl sulfoxide-chlorine reagent. 

The use of dimethyl sulfoxide-acetic anhydride as a reagent for the oxidation of unhindered steroidal alcohols does not appear to be as promising due to extensive formation of by-products. However, the reagent is sufficiently reactive to oxidize the hindered 11 j -hydroxyl group to the 11-ketone in moderate yield. The use of sulfur trioxide-pyridine complex in dimethyl sulfoxide has also been reported. The results parallel those using DCC-DMSO but reaction times are much shorter and the work-up is more facile since the separation of dicyclohexylurea is not necessary. Allylic alcohols can be oxidized by this procedure without significant side reactions. 

Dimethyl sulfoxide reacts with trifluoroacetic anhydride at low tempera ture to give a complex that is an efficient reagent for the oxidation of alcohols to carbonyl compounds [40 41] This reagent can be used to oxidize primary and secondary aliphatic alcohols, cycloalkyl alcohols, and allylic, homoallylic, ben-zylic, acetylenic, and steroidal alcohols (equation 19)... 

Sharpless and Masumune have applied the AE reaction on chiral allylic alcohols to prepare all 8 of the L-hexoses. ° AE reaction on allylic alcohol 52 provides the epoxy alcohol 53 in 92% yield and in >95% ee. Base catalyze Payne rearrangement followed by ring opening with phenyl thiolate provides diol 54. Protection of the diol is followed by oxidation of the sulfide to the sulfoxide via m-CPBA, Pummerer rearrangement to give the gm-acetoxy sulfide intermediate and finally reduction using Dibal to yield the desired aldehyde 56. Homer-Emmons olefination followed by reduction sets up the second substrate for the AE reaction. The AE reaction on optically active 57 is reagent... 

Sulfoxides (R1—SO—R2), which are tricoordinate sulfur compounds, are chiral when R1 and R2 are different, and a-sulfmyl carbanions derived from optically active sulfoxides are known to retain the chirality. Therefore, these chiral carbanions usually give products which are rich in one diastereomer upon treatment with some prochiral reagents. Thus, optically active sulfoxides have been used as versatile reagents for asymmetric syntheses of many naturally occurring products116, since optically active a-sulfinyl carbanions can cause asymmetric induction in the C—C bond formation due to their close vicinity. In the following four subsections various reactions of a-sulfinyl carbanions are described (A) alkylation and acylation, (B) addition to unsaturated bonds such as C=0, C=N or C= N, (C) nucleophilic addition to a, /5-unsaturated sulfoxides, and (D) reactions of allylic sulfoxides. 

There is generally little or no competition from 1,2 addition (to the C=0). However, when R is allylic,l,4 addition is observed with some substrates and 1,2 addition with others. The compound R2CuLi also add to a,P-unsaturated sulfones but not to simple aP-unsaturated nitriles. Organocopper reagents RCu (as well as certain R2CuLi) add to ocP-unsaturated and acetylenic sulfoxides. ... 

Bromination of the enol ether product with two equivalents of bromine followed by dehydrobromination afforded the Z-bromoenol ether (Eq. 79) which could be converted to the zinc reagent and cross-coupled with aryl halides [242]. Dehydrobromination in the presence of thiophenol followed by bromination/dehydrobromination affords an enol thioether [243]. Oxidation to the sulfone, followed by exposure to triethylamine in ether, resulted in dehydrobromination to the unstable alkynyl sulfone which could be trapped with dienes in situ. Alternatively, dehydrobromination of the sulfide in the presence of allylic alcohols results in the formation of allyl vinyl ethers which undergo Claisen rearrangements [244]. Further oxidation followed by sulfoxide elimination results in highly unsaturated trifluoromethyl ketonic products (Eq. 80). 

Another [2,3] sigmatropic rearrangement converts allylic sulfoxides to allylically rearranged alcohols by treatment with a thiophilic reagent such as trimethyl phosphite.539 In this... 

Mislow s [2,3]-sigmatropic rearrangement of sulfoxides is more than a mechanistic curiosity, because the intermediate sulfenate 5.83 can be intercepted by a suitably thiophilic reagent, converting an enantiomerically enriched sulfoxide 5.82 into a comparably enriched rearranged allyl alcohol 5.84, with suprafacial shift 5.85 of the functionality. 

The at complex from DIB AH and butyllithium is a selective reducing agent.16 It is used tor the 1,2-reduction of acyclic and cyclic enones. Esters and lactones are reduced at room temperature to alcohols, and at -78 C to alcohols and aldehydes. Acid chlorides are rapidly reduced with excess reagent at -78 C to alcohols, but a mixture of alcohols, aldehydes, and acid chlorides results from use of an equimolar amount of reagent at -78 C. Acid anhydrides are reduced at -78 C to alcohols and carboxylic acids. Carboxylic acids and both primary and secondary amides are inert at room temperature, whereas tertiary amides (as in the present case) are reduced between 0 C and room temperature to aldehydes. The at complex rapidly reduces primary alkyl, benzylic, and allylic bromides, while tertiary alkyl and aryl halides are inert. Epoxides are reduced exclusively to the more highly substituted alcohols. Disulfides lead to thiols, but both sulfoxides and sulfones are inert. Moreover, this at complex from DIBAH and butyllithium is able to reduce ketones selectively in the presence of esters. 

The reagent converts aldehydes or ketones into oxygenated perhydrooxobenzofur-anes by a 1,6-conjugate addition followed by aldol-type cyclization. Remaining steps involve dehydration, oxidation to the sulfoxide, and allylic sulfoxide-sulfenate rearrangement.1... 

Claisen rearrangement of aUylic alcohols to ethyl dienoates. Claisen rearrangement of allylic alcohols with an orthoacetate is known to provide 2-carbon homologated y,8-unsaturated esters (6, 607-608). Reaction with the phenylsulfinylorthoacetate 1 is accompanied by an in situ sulfoxide elimination to provide 2-carbon homologated dienoate esters (equation I). This novel reagent was used to convert the... 

If the latter reaction proceeds through a closed transition state (e.g., 5 in Scheme 7.2), good diastereocontrol can be expected in the case of trans- and cis-CrotylSiCl3 (2b/2c) [14, 15]. Here, the anh-diastereoisomer 3b should be obtained from trans-crotyl derivative 2b, whereas the syn-isomer 3c should result from the reaction of the cis-isomer 2c (Scheme 7.2). Furthermore, this mechanism creates an opportunity for transferring the chiral information if the Lewis base employed is chiral. Provided that the Lewis base dissociates from the silicon in the intermediate 6 at a sufficient rate, it can act as a catalyst (rather than as a stoichiometric reagent). Typical Lewis bases that promote the allylation reaction are the common dipolar aprotic solvents, such as dimethylformamide (DMF) [8,12], dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) [8, 9], and hexamethylphosphoramide (HMPA) [9, 16], in addition to other substances that possess a strongly Lewis basic oxygen, such as various formamides [17] (in a solution or on a solid support [7, 8, 18]), urea derivatives [19], and catecholates [10] (and their chiral modifications [5c], [20]). It should be noted that, upon coordination to a Lewis base, the silicon atom becomes more Lewis acidic (vide infra), which facilitates its coordination to the carbonyl in the cyclic transition state 5. 

---