https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2019/NP/C8NP00092A

Marine natural products.

Small-molecule H-bond donors in asymmetric catalysis.

Hydrogen bonding is responsible for the structure of much of the world around us. The unusual and complex properties of bulk water, the ability of proteins to fold into stable three-dimensional structures, the fidelity of DNA base pairing, and the binding of ligands to receptors are among the manifestations of this ubiquitous noncovalent interaction. In addition to its primacy as a structural determinant, hydrogen bonding plays a crucial functional role in catalysis. Hydrogen bonding to an electrophile serves to decrease the electron density of this species, activating it toward nucleophilic attack. This principle is employed frequently by Nature's catalysts, enzymes, for the acceleration of a wide range of chemical processes. Recently, organic chemists have begun to appreciate the tremendous potential offered by hydrogen bonding as a mechanism for electrophile activation in small-molecule, synthetic catalyst systems. In particular, chiral hydrogen-bond donors have emerged as a broadly applicable class of catalysts for enantioselective synthesis. This review documents these advances, emphasizing the structural and mechanistic features that contribute to high enantioselectivity in hydrogen-bond-mediated catalytic processes.

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Asymmetric catalysis by chiral hydrogen-bond donors.

Chiral nitrogen-containing compounds are widely distributed in nature and include many biologically important molecules (Chart 1). In these compounds, the nitrogen-containing units are known to play important roles for their bioactivities. For the synthesis of these chiral nitrogen-containing building blocks, use of imines as electrophiles is the most promising and convenient route.1 While many approaches using chiral imines or chiral nucleophiles have been reported,1 these diastereoselective reactions have some disadvantages. First, the procedures to introduce chiral auxiliaries to substrates and to remove them after the diastereoselective reactions are often tedious. Second, more than stoichiometric amounts of chiral sources are needed to obtain chiral compounds according to these reactions. On the other hand, catalytic enantioselective reactions provide the most efficient methods for the synthesis of chiral compounds,2 because large quantities of chiral compounds are expected to be prepared using small amounts of chiral sources. While much progress has been made recently in catalytic enantioselective reactions of aldehydes and ketones such as aldol,3 allylation,4 Diels-Alder,5 cyanation reactions,6 reduction,1b,2b etc., progress in catalytic enantioselective reactions of imines is rather slow. There are some difficulties in performing catalytic enantioselective reactions of imines. For example, in the cases of chiral Lewis acid promoted asymmetric Shū Kobayashi was born in 1959 in Tokyo, Japan. He studied chemistry at the University of Tokyo and received his Ph.D. in 1988 (Professor T. Mukaiyama). After spending 11 years at Science University of Tokyo (SUT), he moved to Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Tokyo, in 1998. His research interests include development of new synthetic methods, development of novel catalysts (especially chiral catalysts), organic synthesis in water, solid-phase organic synthesis, total synthesis of biologically interesting compounds, and organometallic chemistry. He received the first Springer Award in Organometallic Chemistry in 1997.

https://chemistry.mdma.ch/hiveboard/picproxie_docs/000499541-cr980414z.pdf

Catalytic enantioselective addition to imines.

The metal (ion)-free catalysis of organic reactions is a contemporary challenge that is just being taken up by chemists. Hence, this field is in its infancy and is briefly reviewed here, along with some rough guidelines and concepts for further catalyst development. Catalysis through explicit hydrogen bonding interactions offers attractive alternatives to metal (ion)-catalyzed reactions by combining supramolecular recognition with chemical transformations in an environmentally benign fashion. Although the catalytic rate accelerations relative to uncatalyzed reactions are often considerably less than for the metal (ion)-catalyzed variants, this need not be a disadvantage. Also, owing to weaker enthalpic binding interactions, product inhibition is rarely a problem and hydrogen bond additives are truly catalytic, even in water.

Metal-free organocatalysis through explicit hydrogen bonding interactions

Conformations of cycloheptadecane. A comparison of methods for conformational searching

A novel cyclic dipeptide —cyclo[(S)-His-(S)-NorArg] — has been prepared which catalyzes an enantioselective version of the Strecker amino acid synthesis. The catalyst, when present in 2 mol % quantity in methanol solution, catalyzes the addition of hydrogen cyanide toN-alkylimines to affordα-amino nitriles in high yield and high enantiomeric excess. Furthermore, acid hydrolysis ofN-benzhydryl-α-amino nitriles afforded the correspondingα-amino acids directly. This methodology affords a variety of arylglycines in exceptionally high enantiomeric excess, but aliphatic amino acids were obtained with low enantioselectivity. Current efforts are underway to expand the scope of this reaction, as well as to elucidate the mechanism of catalysis and the roles played by substrate and catalyst in determining the stereochemical outcome of the reaction.

Asymmetric Catalysis of the Strecker Amino Acid Synthesis by a Cyclic Dipeptide

Facile and Efficient Guanylation of Amines Using Thioureas and Mukaiyama's Reagent

The C2−C6 (Schmittel)/ene cyclization of enyne-allenes is studied by a combination of kinetic isotope effects, theoretical calculations, and dynamics trajectories. For the cyclization of allenol acetate 9, the isotope effect (kCH3/kCD3) is approximately 1.43. The isotope effect is interpreted in terms of a highly asynchronous transition state near the concerted/stepwise boundary. This is supported by density functional theory calculations that locate a highly asynchronous transition structure for the concerted ene reaction. However, calculations of both the experimental system and a model reaction were unable to locate a transition structure for formation of the diradical intermediate of a stepwise mechanism. The stepwise mechanism and the asynchronous concerted mechanism start out geometrically similar, and the two pathways appear to have merged as far as the initial transition structure. For the model reaction, quasiclassical direct dynamics trajectories emanating from the initial transition structure a...

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Mark A. Lipton

Papers

Conformations of cycloheptadecane. A comparison of methods for conformational searching

Asymmetric Catalysis of the Strecker Amino Acid Synthesis by a Cyclic Dipeptide

Facile and Efficient Guanylation of Amines Using Thioureas and Mukaiyama's Reagent

"Concerted" transition state, stepwise mechanism. Dynamics effects in C2-C6 enyne allene cyclizations.

Synthesis and biological evaluation of a library of resveratrol analogues as inhibitors of COX-1, COX-2 and NF-κB