Thioesters Michael donors

A variety of Michael donors such as ketones, esters, thioesters, amides, lactones and lactams may be used and in all of these cases the problems of stereoselectivity apply. 

Michael addition of metal enolates to a,/3-unsaturated carbonyls has been intensively studied in recent years and provides an established method in organic synthesis for the preparation of a wide range of 1,5-dicarbonyl compounds (128) under neutral and mild conditions . Metal enolates derived from ketones or esters typically act as Michael donors, and a,-unsaturated carbonyls including enoates, enones and unsaturated amides are used as Michael acceptors. However, reaction between a ketone enolate (125) and an a,/3-unsaturated ester (126) to form an ester enolate (127, equation 37) is not the thermodynamically preferred one, because ester enolates are generally more labile than ketone enolates. Thus, this transformation does not proceed well under thermal or catalytic conditions more than equimolar amounts of additives (mainly Lewis acids, such as TiCU) are generally required to enable satisfactory conversion, as shown in Table 8. Various groups have developed synthons as unsaturated ester equivalents (ortho esters , thioesters ) and /3-lithiated enamines as ketone enolate equivalents to afford a conjugate addition with acceptable yields. 

The epi-quinine urea 81b was also found by Wennemers to promote an asymmetric decarboxylation/Michael addition between thioester 143 and 124 to afford the product 144 in good yield and high enantioselectivity (up to 90% ee) (Scheme 9.49). Here, malonic acid half-thioesters serve as a thioester enolate (i.e., enolate Michael donors). This reaction mimics the polyketide synthase-catalyzed decarboxylative acylation reactions of CoA-bound malonic acid half-thiesters in the biosynthesis of fatty adds and polyketides. The authors suggested, analogously with the enzyme system, that the urea moiety is responsible for activating the deprotonated malonic add half-thioesters that, upon decarboxylation, read with the nitroolefin electrophile simultaneously activated by the protonated quinuclidine moiety (Figure 9.5) [42]. 

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