Angewandte
Chemie
DOI: 10.1002/anie.200805383
Synthetic Methods
Highly Efficient and Regioselective Platinum(II)-Catalyzed Tandem
Synthesis of Multiply Substituted Indolines and Tetrahydro-
quinolines**
Xin-Yuan Liu and Chi-Ming Che*
Transition-metal-catalyzed tandem cyclization reactions can
provide an efficient way to construct polycylic structures from
readily accessible organic compounds.[1] In particular, the use
of platinum and gold complexes as catalysts has recently
generated a variety of methods for the synthesis of organic
compounds. These syntheses exhibit good selectivity, have
high atom-economy, and are carried out under mild reaction
Scheme 1. The highly selective formation of indolines or tetrahydroqui-
nolines from metal-catalyzed tandem reactions.
conditions and at low catalyst loadings.[2]
Following our recent work on the synthesis of substituted
1,2-dihydroquinolines and pyrrolo[1,2-a]quinolines from
reactions of alkynes with amines or aminoalkynes through
gold(I)-catalyzed tandem cyclization,[3] we turned to a more
complicated system, that is, the metal-catalyzed reaction of
aminoalkynes (1) with 1,3-diketones (2; see Scheme 1). A
wide variety of products could be expected from this reaction
based on well-documented metal-catalyzed reactions such as
1) intermolecular addition of 2 to alkynes,[2b,4] 2) condensa-
tion of 2 with amines to give b-enaminones,[2a,4c,5] and
3) hydroamination of 1 to generate an enamine intermedia-
te[2a,b,4c] and possible reaction of the enamine with 2 to give a
mixture of products.[6] Unexpectedly, we detected neither a b-
enaminone nor the product resulting from the intermolecular
addition of 2 to the alkynyl moiety of 1, when 1 and 2 were
with the platinum(II) compound as the catalyst. The reaction
was found to result in the isolation of indoline or tetrahy-
droquinoline derivative 3 in up to 99% yield by a highly
selective tandem cyclization. This new method for the syn-
thesis of indoline or tetrahydroquinoline derivatives is
reported herein (Scheme 1).
for the construction of indolines use precursors that already
contain the six-membered ring of the indoline bicyclic core.[9]
Few methods are known for the assembly of both the six- and
five-membered rings (of the indoline core) from acyclic
precursors. All of these methods involve an intramolecular
[4+2] cycloaddition step.[10] A notable example is the stoi-
chiometric intramolecular [4+2] cycloaddition of ynamides
and conjugated enynes—a method that is particularly useful
for the construction of indolines bearing multiple substituents
on the six-membered ring.[10d] The method reported herein
(Scheme 1) is useful for constructing indoline compounds
bearing multiple substituents on both the six- and five-
membered rings. Also, the method has a very broad substrate
scope and can be used to synthesize tetrahydroquinoline
derivatives. The indoline or tetrahydroquinoline compounds
can be obtained in good to excellent yields and with high
regioselectivity and with almost complete chemoselectivity
under mild reaction conditions.
To optimize the reaction conditions, we treated 4-
methoxy-N-(pent-4-ynyl)aniline (1A) with 2,4-pentanedione
(2a) in different solvents and screened a variety of metal
catalysts. These catalysts were based on Cu, Co, Ni, Ag, Au,
Pd, or Pt compounds and the results are shown in Table S1 of
the Supporting Information. These studies revealed that
methanol was the solvent of choice, and catalyst K2PtCl4 gave
the product 3Aa in the best yield. The yield could be
improved either by lowering the reaction temperature to
408C or by adding activated, powdered molecular sieves (4 ꢀ
M.S.). The catalyst loading could be reduced from 5 to
1 mol% without affecting the yield of 3Aa. However, a
decrease in the yield of 3Aa was observed when the amount
of 2a was reduced from 4 to 1.2 equivalents. The optimal
reaction conditions were found to be 1 mol% of K2PtCl4 in
the presence of molecular sieves (4 ꢀ) with methanol as the
solvent at 408C for 22 hours, and gave the product 3Aa in
88% yield (Table 1, entry 1). Trifluoromethanesulfonic acid
did not catalyze this reaction (Table S1, entry 28, in the
Supporting Information).
Indoline frameworks are ubiquitous structural motifs in a
myriad of biologically active alkaloid natural products[7] and
pharmaceutically active compounds.[8] Consequently, there
has been continued interest in the development of efficient
methods for the syntheses of indolines bearing multiple and
diverse substituent patterns. Most of the methods available
[*] X.-Y. Liu, Prof. Dr. C.-M. Che
Department of Chemistry and Open Laboratory of Chemical Biology,
Institute of Molecular Technology for Drug Discovery and Synthesis,
The University of Hong Kong
Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong (P.R. China)
Fax: (+852)2857-1586
E-mail: cmche@hku.hk
[**] This study was supported by The University of Hong Kong
(University Development Fund), The Hong Kong Research Grants
Council, and The University Grants Committee of the Hong Kong
SAR of China (Area of Excellence Scheme, AoE/P-10/01).
Supporting information for this article is available on the WWW
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2009, 48, 2367 –2371
ꢀ 2009 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
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