B. Ali et al. / Tetrahedron Letters 56 (2015) 4234–4241
4235
Figure 2. Structure of mercapto oxopyrrolidine oligosaccharides.
OAc
O
Typical routes to aminopyrrolidines employ resolution of race-
mates,17 radical cyclization,18 or a chiral pool with carbohydrates19
O
and amino-acid derivatives20 as starting materials.
O
1. CH3COCl, reflux, 24h
HO
N
OH
2. 4-iodoaniline, THF, rt, 3h,
reflux, 1h
3. CH3COCl, reflux, 6h
According to previously published reports, 3-aminopyrrolidines
are prepared through an aza-Michael addition, either from
maleimide with amines using a base such as TMEDA (tetram-
ethylethylenediamine) or TMCDA (R,R)-N,N,N0,N0-tetramethyl-1,
2-diaminocyclohexane)21 or from aspartic acid.22 There are few
articles reported, but similar 3-aminopyrrolidine compounds are
commercially available. There are many reports on the Michael
addition of amines to electron-deficient alkenes.
These conjugate additions are carried out in the presence of a
strong base or acid.23 To avoid these harsh conditions, a number
of milder procedures have been developed using reagents such as
SnCl4/FeCl3,24 InCl3,25 CeCl3ꢁ7H2ONaI,26 Yb(OTf)3,27 Cu(OTf)2,28
CAN (cerium ammonium nitrate),29 Bi(NO3)3,30 Bi(OTf)3,31
LiClO4,32 KF/alumina,33 SmI2,34 Cu(acac)2/ionic liquid,35 ionic liq-
uid/quaternary ammonium salt in water,36 boric acid in water,37
b-cyclodextrin,38 ZrOCl2ꢁ8H2O,39 borax,40 bromodimethylsulfo-
nium bromide,41 [HP(HNCH2CH2)3N]NO3,42 cationic palladium
complexes,43 MnCl2,44 DBFOX-Ph(R)ꢁNi(ClO4)ꢁ6H2O,45 and so forth.
In our previous report, we prepared maleimide from malic
acid.46 In the present investigation, we explore a simple and gen-
eral procedure for the generation of maleimide and the conjugate
addition of a variety of amines in the presence of a catalytic
amount of copper(I) iodide in THF in a one-pot reaction.
O
OH
4
82%
I
5
Scheme 1. Synthesis of 1-(4-iodophenyl)-2,5-dioxopyrrolidin-3-yl acetate (5).
Buchwald performed the iodo substitution with an amine using
CuI47 and Hartwig later presented the same substitution with pal-
ladium.48 Initially, we used CuI (5 mol %), employing Et3N at 70 °C
for 24 h, and we obtained a mixture of products (Table 1, entry 1)
instead of getting the target product (Scheme 2).
Then, we used different palladium (Pd) and palladium–copper
(Pd/Cu) catalysts at 70 °C for 24 h with 2.5 equiv of amine. In the
next strategy, 1.2 equiv of amine and PMDTA (N,N,N0,N0,N00-pen-
tamethyldiethylenetriamine) were used with Pd and Pd/Cu
catalysts at 70 °C for 24 h and, in these cases, compound 7 was
the major product, which inspired us to increase the yield
further (Table 1, entries 8 and 9). As shown in Table 1, entry 9,
the yield of product
7 was 48%; when using Pd(PPh3)2Cl
(5%) + CuI (5%) as the catalyst, decreasing the reflux time to 3 h,
and using DMF as the solvent, the yield could be increased to
56% (Table 1, entry 10).
Next, using Pd(PPh3)2Cl (5%) + CuI (5%) catalysts and PMDTA at
room temperature in the presence of DMSO or DMF as the solvent,
the reaction resulted in yields of 55% and 58% (Table 1, entries 11
and 12, respectively). But, when CuI (30 mol %) was used under the
same conditions, it resulted in a 63% yield (Table 1, entry 13),
which was attributed to Cu–PMDTA complexation and the genera-
tion of maleimide and then addition of the amine, as presented in
our previous investigation.46 Then, we tried to put the catalyst
(CuI) and PMDTA in the reaction with the starting material and
stirred it for 2 h to generate maleimide and then addition of the
amine proceeded overnight, which gave a good yield of 70%
through a one-pot, two-step reaction and allowed the starting
material to be recovered (Table 1, entry 14).
Results and discussion
We obtained 1-(4-iodophenyl)-2,5-dioxopyrrolidin-3-yl acetate
(5) from
L
-malic acid according to our reported protocol,46 in which
L-malic acid was treated with acetyl chloride before 4-iodoaniline
was added at room temperature over 3 h, after which it was
refluxed for 1 h and again treated with acetyl chloride to give imide
(5) in 82% yield (Scheme 1).
With the starting material, 1-(4-iodophenyl)-2,5-dioxopyrro-
lidin-3-yl acetate, in hand and with the intention of obtaining
the target product by Buchwald–Hartwig methods, we surveyed
various catalysts, temperatures, and bases for the nucleophilic
substitution, but, to our surprise, this methodology failed to yield
the target product because, at elevated temperature, the reacting
amines were active sites for addition instead of substitution
reactions.
Using the above conditions, the bases PMDTA, Et3N, and DIPEA
were used, leading to yields ranging of 65–71% (Table 1, entries 15
and 16). The best result was obtained when PMDTA (1 equiv) and
Et3N (1 equiv) were used together as the base, giving an 88% yield