5362
L. Sahoo et al. / Tetrahedron Letters 54 (2013) 5361–5365
reduction of sugar azide to amine.17 In the literature of organic
synthesis, SnCl2 is routinely used for the reduction of nitrate,18
nitrile19, and azide.20 SnCl2 was also used in stoichiometric amount
for the reduction of glycosyl azide to glycosylamine with a low
yield of 52%.21 The low yield may be due to the instability of glyco-
syl amine and highly hygroscopic nature of SnCl2. Here, in this
present work, a novel one-pot synthesis of diversely functionalized
glycopyranosyl chloroacetamides has been described, where cata-
lytic amount of SnCl4 reacts with tin metal to generate SnCl2,
which effectively converts glycopyranosyl azides to the corre-
sponding amines followed by in situ chloroacetylation.
OAc
OAc
SnCl4/ Sn,
O
O
chloroacetic anhydride
AcO
AcO
H
N
AcO
AcO
1
+
solvent, rt, 24 h
Cl
OAc
OH
OAc
O
Scheme 2. Reductive chloroacetylation of glucopyranosyl azide using different
solvents.
OAc
OAc
SnCl4/ Sn,
chloroacetic anhydride
O
O
AcO
AcO
H
N
AcO
AcO
1
+
solvent, rt, 24 h
Cl
OAc
OH
OAc
O
As a part of our work, different tin salts were tried as economical
and mild reagent system for the one pot reductive chloroacetylation
of glycopryranosyl azide to glycopyranosyl chloroacetamide. In the
literature, SnCl2 is very well-known for the reduction of azide to
amine.11 Per-O-acetylated glucopyranosyl azide (1, 1 mmol) was
treated with anhydrous SnCl2 (1 mmol) in dry methanol in the pres-
ence of chloroacetic anhydride (1.1 mmol) (Scheme 1).
Scheme 3. Reductive chloroacetylation of glucopyranosyl azide using different
chloroacetylating agent.
Table 2
Reductive chloroacetylation using SnCl4/Sn in different solvents
The 1H NMR of the crude product showed the presence of three
Solvent
13 (% yield)
14 (% yield)
compounds 2,3,4,6-tetra-O-acetylated-
60%) along with 40% of the desired product, per-O-acetylated
b- -glucopyranosyl chloroacetamide (14). The yield of the desired
chloroacetamide increased from 40% to 50% by using Sn(II) acetate
along with tin metal. This initial result led us to replace the hygro-
scopic Sn(II) salts with catalytic amount of SnCl4 (10 mol %, 1 M
solution in DCM) along with tin metal to generate Sn(II) in situ.
The mixture of SnCl4 (10 mol %) with tin metal works as good as
Sn(OAc)2/Sn mixture and the desired chloroacetamide was
obtained in 50% yield (Table 1).
a/b-D-glucopyranose (13,
DCM
CH3CN
DMF
DCM + DMF (9:1)
0
0
50
25
0
0
50
75
D
Table 3
Reductive chloroacetylation of glucopyranosyl azide using different chloroacetylating
agent
Acetylating agent
13 (% yield)
14 (% yield)
The formation of product 13 is due to the hydrolysis of the
unstable intermediate per-O-acetylated-b-D-glucopyranosyl amine
in methanol. For this reason, a series of solvents other than meth-
anol were screened for this reaction using SnCl4 (10 mol %)/Sn as
the reducing agent and chloroacetic anhydride as the acylating
agent (Scheme 2).
ClCH2COOH
0
25
20
0
100
75
80
(ClCH2CO)2O
DCC + ClCH2COOH
ClCH2COCl
100
The reaction did not work in aprotic solvents like acetonitrile,
dichloromethane (DCM) and unreacted per-O-acetylated glucopyr-
anosyl azide was recovered in both the cases. In dry DMF, the yield
of compound 14 was only 50%. Then different solvent combina-
tions were tried and DCM with dimethylformamide (DMF) (9:1)
was found to be the most efficient solvent system resulting in
the formation of 75% of the required chloroacetamide 14 (Table 2,
Scheme 3).
To improve the yield of the desired product further by using
more reactive chloroacetylating agent, a set of chloroacylating
agents were screened for the reaction with the best possible
combination of reducing agent and solvent system. Unlike
Staudinger reaction, chloroacetic acid was found to be unreac-
tive in case of the SnCl4/Sn reagent system and 2,3,4,6-tetra-O-
acetyl- /b- -glucopyranose 13 was obtained as the only product.
a
D
Dicyclohexylcarbodiimide (DCC) activated chloroacetic acid gave
a better yield of chloroacetamide 14 (80%), but when chloroace-
tyl chloride was used as the acylating agent, the glycosyl azide
was fully converted to the corresponding chloroacetamide 14
without the formation of corresponding C-1 hydroxy derivative
13 (Table 3).
From the above results, the best possible combination was
found to be SnCl4 (10 mol %)/Sn as the reducing agent in a mixture
of DCM and DMF (9:1) as the solvent and chloroacetyl chloride as
the chloroacylating agent (Scheme 4).
A plausible mechanism of the reaction was proposed where
Sn(IV) (from SnCl4) reacts with tin metal to generate Sn(II) in situ.
This Sn(II) acts as the reducing agent for the sugar azide and itself
gets oxidized to Sn(IV). Sn(II) is regenerated again in the system by
reaction of Sn(IV) and tin. This way only catalytic amount of SnCl4 re-
duces the sugar azide in the presence of tin metal.
To examine the utility of this reaction, a series of diversely pro-
tected glycosyl azides (Table 4) were reacted in the standard reac-
tion condition where SnCl4 (10 mol %) with tin metal in a mixture
OAc
OAc
Sn reagent,
O
O
H
N
AcO
AcO
AcO
AcO
chloroacetic anhydride
+
1
Cl
OH
OAc
OAc
13
dry MeOH, rt, 24 h
O
14
Scheme 1. Reductive chloroacetylation of glucopyranosyl azide using different tin
reagents.
SnCl4 /Sn,
OAc
ClCH2COCl
Table 1
O
1
H
N
AcO
AcO
Reductive chloroacetylation using different Sn reagents
dry DCM / DMF (9 : 1)
rt, 24 h
Cl
OAc
Sn reagent
13 (% yield)
14 (% yield)
O
14
SnCl2
Sn(OAc)2/Sn
SnCl4/Sn
60
50
50
40
50
50
Scheme 4. Reductive chloroacetylation of glucopyranosyl azide under standard
reduction condition.