A new type of chiral-pyridoxamines for catalytic asymmetric transamination of α-keto acids
A new type of chiral pyridoxamines bearing an adjacent chiral stereocenter has been developed via multi-step synthesis. The pyridoxamines displayed catalytic activity in asymmetric transamination of α-keto acids to give a variety of optically active amino acids in 27–78% yields with 34–62% ee's under very mild conditions. This work provides a synthetic strategy to construct new chiral pyridoxamines using bromopyridine 7 as a key synthon and also represents an early example of the applications of chiral pyridoxamines in asymmetric catalysis.