488787-48-0Relevant articles and documents
Synthesis of tetrahydrocannabinols based on an indirect 1,4-addition strategy
William, Anthony D.,Kobayashi, Yuichi
, p. 8771 - 8782 (2007/10/03)
The synthetic procedure presented for the preparation of the title compounds requires 1,4-addition of bulky cuprates to cyclohexenones and subsequent reaction with electrophiles. However, the enolates generated by BF3·OEt2-assistance suffer from lack of nucleophilicity. To circumvent this problem, we developed an indirect method consisting of the following three steps: (1) iodination of the cyclohexenones at the α position; (2) BF3·OEt2-assisted 1,4-addition of cuprates (Ar2Cu(CN)-Li2, Ar = aryl) followed by quenching the enolates with water; (3) reaction of the α-iodo-β-arylcylohexanones thus formed with EtMgBr to generate magnesium enolates. The enolates thus generated in this way showed a high reactivity toward ClP(O)(OEt)2 to furnish enol phosphates. The aforementioned procedure was also applied to a synthesis of optically active Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol. In addition, a naphthalene analogue of the latter compound was also synthesized in a similar way.