.
Angewandte
Communications
Organocatalysis
Enantioselective Addition of a 2-Alkoxycarbonyl-1,3-dithiane to
Imines Catalyzed by a Bis(guanidino)iminophosphorane
Organosuperbase
Azusa Kondoh, Masafumi Oishi, Tadahiro Takeda, and Masahiro Terada*
Abstract: A chiral bis(guanidino)iminophosphorane catalyzes
enantioselective addition reactions of a 1,3-dithiane derivative
as a pronucleophile. The chiral uncharged organosuperbase
facilitates the addition of benzyloxycarbonyl-1,3-dithiane to
aromatic N-Boc-protected imines to provide optically active a-
amino-1,3-dithiane derivatives, which are valuable versatile
building blocks in organic synthesis.
compounds, imines, and Michael acceptors, furnishes the
corresponding protected carbonyl compounds. In general,
a
stoichiometric amount of a strong base, such as
n-butyllithium, is required for generating the dithiane anion
prior to the reaction with electrophiles. The direct addition
reaction using a catalytic amount of a Brønsted base is rather
limited because of the low acidity at the 2-position, even if it is
a to an electron-withdrawing group, such as an alkoxycar-
[
7–9]
I
n recent years, much attention has been paid to the
bonyl group.
rare.
In particular, enantioselective variants are
[
10]
development of chiral uncharged strong organobase catalysts
and their application in a variety of enantioselective reac-
We envisioned that the enantioselective addition
reaction of 2-alkoxycarbonyl-1,3-dithianes 2 as less acidic
pronucleophiles with imines 3 by using our newly developed
catalyst 1 would afford optically active a-amino-1,3-dithiane
derivatives, which are known as valuable versatile building
blocks (Scheme 1). Currently, the synthesis of those com-
pounds relies on the asymmetric addition of 2-lithio-1,3-
dithianes to chiral N-sulfinyl- and N-phosphoryl imines where
a stoichiometric amount of a Brønsted base as well as a chiral
[
1]
tions. Many efficient catalysts, such as chiral guanidines and
P1 phosphazenes, have been developed to date, and they have
enabled many useful transformations that cannot be achieved
with conventional chiral tertiary amine catalysts, including
[
2,3]
cinchona alkaloids.
However, the application of these
catalysts is still limited to pronucleophiles bearing a rather
acidic proton, such as 1,3-dicarbonyl compounds and nitro-
alkanes, because of their inherent basicity. Thus, the develop-
ment of much stronger organobases, namely chiral organo-
superbases, is desirable to overcome these intrinsic limitations
and to pave the way to enantioselective transformations that
have never been achieved before. Recently, we have devel-
oped novel chiral bis(guanidino)iminophosphorane 1 as
a chiral uncharged organosuperbase catalyst that facilitates
[11,12]
auxiliary are required.
We herein report the realization of
the catalytic enantioselective addition reaction of 1,3-dithiane
derivatives to aromatic imines by using a chiral bis(guanidi-
no)iminophosphorane organosuperbase catalyst.
[4]
the activation of less acidic pronucleophiles. Its usability was
demonstrated in the enantioselective amination of 2-alkyl-
tetralone derivatives as less acidic pronucleophiles. To extend
the utility of the newly developed catalyst, particularly in
synthetically useful transformations, we focused our attention
on 2-alkoxycarbonyl-1,3-dithiane 2 as a less acidic pronucleo-
phile. The addition reaction of 1,3-dithianes is one of the most
[
5,6]
important umpolung reactions in organic synthesis.
The
Scheme 1. Enantioselective addition of 2-alkoxycarbonyl-1,3-dithianes
to imines catalyzed by (M)-1. PG=protecting group.
anion of 1,3-dithiane is regarded as an acyl anion equivalent,
and its reaction with various electrophiles, such as carbonyl
We began our investigation by evaluating the reaction of
2-benzyloxycarbonyl-1,3-dithiane (2a) as a pronucleophile
with N-Boc imine 3a. The catalyst was generated in situ by
treating (M)-1·HX, which possesses helical chirality because
of the spirocyclic structure and the central chirality of the
[
*] Dr. A. Kondoh, Prof. Dr. M. Terada
Research and Analytical Center for Giant Molecules
Graduate School of Science, Tohoku University
Aramaki, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8578 (Japan)
E-mail: mterada@m.tohoku.ac.jp
M. Oishi, Prof. Dr. M. Terada
Department of Chemistry, Graduate School of Science
Tohoku University
(
(
1S,2S)-1,2-diphenyl-1,2-ethanediamine unit, with NaN-
SiMe ) prior to use. An initial attempt was made by reacting
3
2
1
1 mol% of (M)-1a·HBr with 10 mol% of NaN(SiMe ) in
3 2
Aramaki, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8578 (Japan)
toluene at À408C. As a result, the desired adduct 4a was
obtained in moderate yield, but with only 3% ee (Table 1,
entry 1). Replacing the solvent with an ethereal solvent, such
as THF or diethyl ether, improved the chemical yield, but the
enantioselectivity was still low (entries 2 and 3). The solvent
T. Takeda
Process Technology Research Laboratories, Daiichi Sankyo Co., Ltd
Edogawa-ku, Tokyo 134-8630 (Japan)
1
5836
ꢀ 2015 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2015, 54, 15836 –15839