DOI: 10.1002/anie.201100152
Asymmetric Catalysis
Palladium-Catalyzed Enantioselective Intramolecular Hydroarylation
of Alkynes To Form Axially Chiral 4-Aryl 2-Quinolinones**
Tetsuro Shibuya, Yu Shibata, Keiichi Noguchi, and Ken Tanaka*
The transition-metal-catalyzed intramolecular
hydroarylation of alkynes, which was first reported
by Fujiwara and co-workers in 2000,[1] is a useful
method for the synthesis of fused aromatic com-
pounds.[2] A large number of transition-metal
catalysts have been developed to date for this
transformation.[3] Research efforts have been
focused on catalytic efficiency, substrate scope,
and regioselectivity (6-endo-dig versus 5-exo-
dig[4]), whereas no enantioselective variant of this
Scheme 1. Axially chiral 4-aryl 2-quinolinone derivatives as pharmaceutically active
compounds and chiral ligands.
transformation has been reported.[5–7] On the other
hand, recent significant advances in atroposelec-
tive biaryl synthesis[8] through transition-metal-
catalyzed enantioselective [2+2+2] cycloaddition reactions
clearly demonstrate the utility of the asymmetric cyclization
strategy for the synthesis of chiral aromatic compounds.[9–11]
As an alternative asymmetric annulation method for atropo-
selective biaryl synthesis, we recently reported an enantiose-
lective cycloisomerization of N-alkenyl aryl ethynylamides
under the catalysis of a cationic palladium(II)/xyl-segphos
complex to give axially chiral 4-aryl 2-pyridones.[12] However,
axially chiral 4-aryl 2-quinolinones rather than 4-aryl 2-
pyridones have been found as core structures of pharmaceuti-
cally active compounds[13] and chiral ligands[14] (Scheme 1).
Therefore, the development of a method for the catalytic
enantioselective synthesis of 4-aryl-2-quinolinones that would
enable facile access to new synthetic analogues of this class of
compounds in enantiomerically enriched form is an important
topic. Herein, we disclose the first catalytic enantioselective
intramolecular hydroarylation of alkynes. The reaction at
room temperature with a cationic palladium(II)/(S)-xyl-H8-
binap complex as the catalyst furnished axially chiral 4-aryl 2-
quinolinones with good ee values.
We first investigated the reaction of N-benzyl-N-phenyl-
propiolamide 1a, which contains a 2-methoxynaphthyl group
at the alkyne terminus, in the presence of a cationic
palladium(II)/(R)-binap complex (20 mol% Pd). Unfortu-
nately, no reaction was observed at room temperature in
72 hours (Scheme 2). At a higher temperature (808C), a
complex mixture was generated.
Scheme 2. Attempted enantioselective intramolecular hydroarylation of
1a with a cationic palladium(II)/(R)-binap complex. Bn=benzyl.
We anticipated that 3-aryl propiolamide 1b with an
electron-rich 2-naphthyl group on the nitrogen atom would
be more nucleophilic than 3-aryl N-phenylpropiolamide
1a.[15] Furthermore, the hydroarylation would occur at the
electron-rich 1-position of the naphthalene ring[16] to give the
axially chiral benzoquinolinone 2b with a highly configura-
tionally stable biaryl axis owing to the steric demands of the
two large ring systems. Gratifyingly, the expected regio- and
enantioselective hydroarylation proceeded to completion at
room temperature in 40 hours in the presence of a cationic
palladium(II)/(R)-binap complex[17] (10 mol% Pd) to give 2b
in high yield with moderate enantioselectivity (Table 1,
entry 1).
[*] T. Shibuya, Y. Shibata, Prof. Dr. K. Tanaka
Department of Applied Chemistry, Graduate School of Engineering
Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology
Koganei, Tokyo 184-8588 (Japan)
Fax: (+81)42-388-7037
E-mail: tanaka-k@cc.tuat.ac.jp
Prof. Dr. K. Noguchi
Instrumentation Analysis Center
Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology
Koganei, Tokyo 184-8588 (Japan)
[**] This research was supported partly by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific
Research (Nos. 20675002 and 21·906) from MEXT (Japan). We
thank Takasago Int. Co. for the gift of segphos, H8-binap, xyl-binap,
xyl-segphos, xyl-H8-binap, and dtbm-segphos.
We then investigated the effects of a variety of axially
chiral biaryl bisphosphine ligands (Scheme 3) on the yield and
enantioselectivity of the reaction. Among the three bis(di-
phenylphosphine) ligands examined (Table 1, entries 1–3),
(R)-H8-binap furnished 2b with the highest enantioselectivity
Supporting information for this article is available on the WWW
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2011, 50, 3963 –3967
ꢀ 2011 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
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