Wittig reaction with protected sugars

IV. Anomalous Wittig Reaction With Free and With Partially Protected Sugars. 284... 

Chiral aldehydes such as N-protected a-aminoaldehydes and a-alkoxyalde-hydes as well as chiral butadienes derived from sugars by a Wittig reaction have also been used in the hetero Diels-Alder reactions successfully with the inducing stereogenic centers remaining in the obtained cycloadducts. 

Application of the Wittig reaction in the carbohydrate field is accompanied by certain difficulties. A correct choice of the initial sugar components is the main problem, owing to the basicity of phosphoranes and, especially, to the drastically basic conditions employed with phosphonium ylides (2a). It is not surprising, therefore, that protected (acetalated and aeetylated) aldehydo sugars and resonance-stabilized phosphoranes were used at first,3-5 although partially protected, and even unprotected, aldoses were shown to be amenable to the reaction with various resonance-stabilized phosphoranes, thanks to the presence of the carbonyl form in the mobile equilibrium. The latter reactions, however, are extremely complicated (see Section IV, p. 284). 

These developments are here surveyed within the same guidelines as were used previously that is, discrete compounds will be dealt with which have one carbon-carbon multiple bond within the main sugar-chain. As before, enols, enediols, enones, dienes, and dienones will not be considered, nor will unsaturated cyclitols or heterocyclic compounds composed partially of acyclic carbohydrates. The first derivatives having carbon substituents attached by a double bond at a branch-point have now been prepared by application of the Wittig reaction to suitably protected glycosulose compounds these compounds are also arbitrarily excluded, as are ethers or acetals bearing unsaturated substituents. 

Davis and coworkers carried out a Wittig-cyclization sequence with the partially protected 2-deoxyamino sugar 191 using an amino acid based phosphonate. Reaction of 191 with the cesium enolate 192 gave a 53% yield of epimers 193 and 194 (1 1 ratio) in which epimerization of the 2-amino group had taken place. The maimo isomer 194 was then epimerized to the more stable gluco 193 derivative by simple treatment with t-BuOLi in methanol (Scheme 38) [54]. 

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