COMMUNICATION
DOI: 10.1002/asia.201402052
N-Heterocyclic Carbene-Catalyzed Enantioselective Annulation of Indolin-3-
ones with Bromoenals
Qijian Ni, Xiaoxiao Song, Gerhard Raabe, and Dieter Enders*[a]
Abstract: N-Heterocyclic carbene-catalyzed reactions of in-
dolin-3-ones with 2-bromoenals opened an asymmetric
access to 3,4-dihydropyranoACTHNUGRTENNUG[3,2-b]indol-2ACHTUNGTNER(NUGN 5H)-ones in good
yields and with good to excellent enantioselectivities. This
protocol tolerates a broad substrate scope. In addition, a pos-
sible mechanism for the annulation reaction is presented.
Over the past decade, N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) cat-
alysis opened an efficient and elegant access for the asym-
metric synthesis of various chiral building blocks, which was
made possible by its unique umpolung ability.[1] The classic
NHC-catalyzed a1-d1-umpolung reactions, such as the ben-
zoin condensation[2] and the Stetter reaction,[3] have been
developed intensively. Since the pioneering reports by the
groups of Glorius, Bode, and Rovis in 2004, homoenolate in-
termediates played an important role as new nucleophiles at
the a or b position of aldehydes accessible for different elec-
trophiles.[4] Recently, a,b-unsaturated acylazolium inter-
mediates opened a new mode of reactions catalyzed by
NHCs and they attracted great attention. Up to now, there
are five kinds of precursors for the generation of a,b-unsatu-
rated acylazoliums, such as ynals,[5] a,b-unsaturated acyl flu-
orides,[6] a,b-unsaturated esters,[6a,7] and stoichiometric oxi-
dation of homoenolates[8] and a-functionalized enals,[9]
which have been documented (Scheme 1).
Scheme 1. Formation of NHC-derived a,b-unsaturated acylazolium inter-
mediates.
ers have developed NHC-catalyzed reactions of enolizable
aldehydes with a,b-unsaturated acylazoliums generated
from 2-bromoenals.[9f] However, indolin-3-ones as a kind of
C-/enol-O dinucleophiles were rarely employed in NHC-cat-
alyzed reactions. To the best of our knowledge, only one
recent paper reported the reaction of indolin-3-ones with
ynals and enals combined with stoichiometric oxidants, thus
leading to the formation of tricyclic indole-fused dihydropyr-
anones.[5e] Based on the previous work, we now report the
enantioselective NHC-catalyzed reaction of 2-bromoenals
with indolin-3-ones, resulting in 3,4-dihydropyranoACHTUNGTRENNUNG[3,2-
b]indol-2-ones, which are regarded as common scaffolds in
many biologically active natural products.[11]
With the development of these new approaches to a,b-un-
saturated acylazolium intermediates, screening the nucleo-
philes was also essential. 1,3-Dicarbonyl compounds were
recognized as the most common Michael donors to conduct
1,4-addition reactions followed by Claisen rearrangements
and intramolecular acylations, which delivered dihydropyra-
nones. Bode and co-workers have recently reported NHC-
catalyzed annulations of a,b-unsaturated acylazoliums with
stable enols such as naphthol[5c] and kojic acid.[5a] In addi-
tion, the NHC-catalyzed rearrangement of a,b-unsaturated
enol esters to form dihydropyranones was demonstrated by
Lupton and co-workers.[10] Very recently, Biju and co-work-
Initially, we investigated the optimal NHC catalysts for
the model reaction of 1-acetylindolin-3-one (1a) with a-bro-
mocinnamaldehyde (2a). The achiral precatalyst A promot-
ed the reaction and gave the desired product in 13% yield
in the presence of NaOAc (Table 1, entry 1). However, the
precatalysts B and E did not yield the product under the
same condition (Table 1, entries 2 and 5). Gratifyingly, good
yields and ee values were obtained when the precatalysts C
and D were used, and the former one proved to be superior
in terms of yield and enantioselectivity (Table 1, entries 3
and 4). Further base screening (Table 1, entries 6–13) re-
vealed that the use of inorganic or organic bases, such as
K3PO4, NEt3, DMAP, DIPEA, DPE, or TMEDA, resulted
in good yields and good to excellent ee values of the desired
product (Table 1, entries 6, 8, 10–13), except DBU, which
led to no reaction (Table 1, entry 7), and DABCO producing
only 15% yield (Table 1, entry 9). It is noteworthy that the
base TMEDA obviously improved the ee value up to 92%.
Based on these conditions, a number of solvents were
screened next. Fortunately, 96% ee and 66% yield were ob-
[a] Q. Ni, X. Song, Prof. Dr. G. Raabe, Prof. Dr. D. Enders
Institute of Organic Chemistry
RWTH Aachen University
Landoltweg 1, 52074 Aachen (Germany)
Fax : (+49)0241-80-92127
Supporting information for this article is available on the WWW
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