Angewandte
Chemie
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201301927
Hydrodefluorination
Selective Catalytic Hydrodefluorination as a Key Step for the Synthesis
of Hitherto Inaccessible Aminopyridine Derivatives**
Gabriel Podolan, Dieter Lentz,* and Hans-Ulrich Reissig*
Dedicated to the Bayer company on the occasion of its 150th anniversary
À
À
The synthesis of specifically substituted pyridines is a perma-
nent challenge since new derivatives of this class of hetero-
cycles are required as building blocks for supramolecular
chemistry, as components of new materials, and also in
quent conversion of C F into C H bonds by catalytic
hydrodefluorination (HDF).[8,9] The strong electron-with-
drawing effect of the fluorine substituents in fluorinated
pyridine derivatives allows the selective substitution of
fluoride by nucleophiles at the 4- or 2-/6-positions of the
heterocyclic ring.[7] Hence 4-aminopyridine derivatives with
additional fluorine substituents on the ring are easily acces-
sible[10] and serve as potential precursors for compounds such
as 2 and 3. The catalytic hydrodefluorination (HDF), that is,
pharmaceutical
science.[1]
4-(Dimethylamino)pyridine
(DMAP) (1) is a frequently used basic catalyst in many
important synthetic transformations,[2] but it also strongly
stabilizes nanoparticles by coordination of the Lewis basic
nitrogen to the metal surface.[3] Due to our interest in
multivalent ligands[4] we set out to synthesize divalent
À
À
the conversion of C F into C H bonds, has been extensively
studied;[8] however, due to the high cost of most reagents and
catalysts as well as limitations in the substrate scope it is
scarcely used for synthetic applications.[9] Our synthetic
strategy to prepare hitherto inaccessible aminopyridine
derivatives used the detour employing the nucleophilic
analogues of 1, in particular, compounds
2 and 3
(Scheme 1).[5] Whereas compound 2 was available in moder-
À
aromatic substitution to create the C N bond followed by
catalytic HDF. For this purpose we used the [Cp2TiF2]/
diphenylsilane system, recently developed for the defluori-
nation of fluoroalkenes.[11,12]
Scheme 1. DMAP 1, divalent BiDMAP 2, and cyclic divalent BiDMAP 3.
To prove the viability of the catalytic HDF of fluorinated
aminopyridines, we used 2,3,5,6-tetrafluoro-4-morpholino-
pyridine (4) as a model substrate in 1,4-dioxane as the solvent
(Scheme 2). Under optimized conditions at temperatures
ate yield by the nucleophilic substitution of 4-chloropyridine
employing the appropriate diamine, the chiral divalent
compound 3 with a more rigid backbone could not be
prepared. Neither were the nucleophilic substitutions of 4-
halopyridines with trans-1,2-diaminocyclohexane in the pres-
ence or absence of palladium catalysts successful,[6] nor were
reactions with 4-(methylamino)pyridine as the nucleophile in
its reactions with difunctionalized cyclohexane derivatives.[5]
The high steric hindrance seems to hamper these substitution
reactions.
Thus we developed a new synthetic strategy for the
preparation of 3 based on two key reactions: nucleophilic
substitution of the (oligo)fluorinated pyridines[7] and subse-
Scheme 2. Regioselective catalytic hydrodefluorination of model sub-
strates 4 and 5.
between 90 to 1108C with 15 mol% of the precatalyst we
obtained the twofold hydrodefluorinated product 6 in 95%
yield. These conditions allow the regioselective substitution of
the more reactive fluorine atoms at C-2 and C-6.[7] Lower
loadings of the precatalyst did not lead to full conversion.
Interestingly, the use of 1,2-dimethoxyethane as a solvent led
to a decrease of the reaction rate; a reaction time of 96 h was
necessary to obtain a similar yield of 92%. Higher catalyst
loadings apparently caused decomposition of precursor 4 or
of the possible intermediates, and the completely hydro-
defluorinated 4-morpholinopyridine (7) could not be
detected. To demonstrate that the “inert” fluorine atoms at
C-3 and C-5 of 4 are not required for a successful HDF, we
also examined 2,6-difluoro-4-morpholinopyridine (5) under
[*] Dr. G. Podolan, Prof. Dr. D. Lentz, Prof. Dr. H.-U. Reissig
Institut fꢀr Chemie und Biochemie
Freie Universitꢁt Berlin
Takustrasse 3, 14195 Berlin (Germany)
E-mail: dieter.lentz@fu-berlin.de
[**] Support of this work by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
(SFB 765 “Multivalency”, GRK 1582 “Fluorine as Key Element” and
Le 423/17-1) and Bayer HealthCare is most gratefully acknowl-
edged. We also thank Dr. Moritz F. Kꢀhnel for experimental advice
and helpful discussions and V. Rojek for preliminary experiments.
Furthermore, we thank P. Jungk for his help in preparing the starting
materials.
Supporting information for this article is available on the WWW
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2013, 52, 9491 –9494
ꢀ 2013 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
9491