High-Throughput Ligand Screening Enables the Enantioselective Conjugate Borylation of Cyclobutenones to Access Synthetically Versatile Tertiary Cyclobutylboronates.

Cyclobutane rings are important in medicinal chemistry, yet few enantioselective methods exist to access this scaffold. In particular, cyclobutylboronates are receiving increasing attention in the literature due to the synthetic versatility of alkylboronic esters and the increasing role of boronic acids in drug discovery. Herein, a conjugate borylation of α-alkyl,ß-aryl/alkyl cyclobutenones is reported leading to the first synthesis of enantioenriched tertiary cyclobutylboronates. Cyclobutanones with two stereogenic centers are obtained in good to high yield, with high enantioselectivity and diastereoselectivity. Vital to this advance are the development of a novel approach to α,ß unsymmetrically disubstituted cyclobutenone substrates and the use of a high-throughput chiral ligand screening platform. The synthetic utility of both the boronic ester and ketone functionalities is displayed, with remarkable chemoselectivity for either group being possible in this small ring scaffold.

Valdecoxib vs. borazavaldecoxib: isoxazole BN/CC isosterism as a case study in designing and stabilizing boron heterocycles.

A comprehensive study on the preparation, hydrolytic stability, and the structural and spectrophotometric properties of 1,2,4,5-oxadiazaboroles is presented by way of a comparison between the NSAID drug valdecoxib (1) and its unprecedented B-N isostere, borazavaldecoxib (2). Knowledge gained from this study was employed in the design of oxadiazaborate salts, a novel class of tetrahedral boron heterocycles displaying good stability in aqueous conditions with promising antifungal and antibacterial properties.

Access to ß-lactams by enantioselective palladium(0)-catalyzed C(sp3)-H alkylation.

ß-Lactams are very important structural motifs because of their broad biological activities as well as their propensity to engage in ring-opening reactions. Transition-metal-catalyzed C-H functionalizations have emerged as strategy enabling yet uncommon highly efficient disconnections. In contrast to the significant progress of Pd(0)-catalyzed C-H functionalization for aryl-aryl couplings, related reactions involving the formation of saturated C(sp(3))-C(sp(3)) bonds are elusive. Reported here is an asymmetric C-H functionalization approach to ß-lactams using readily accessible chloroacetamide substrates. Important aspects of this transformation are challenging C(sp(3))-C(sp(3)) and strain-building reductive eliminations to for the four-membered ring. In general, the ß-lactams are formed in excellent yields and enantioselectivities using a bulky taddol phosphoramidite ligand in combination with adamantyl carboxylic acid as cocatalyst.

Rhodium-catalyzed asymmetric hydrogenation of olefins with PhthalaPhos, a new class of chiral supramolecular ligands.

A library of 19 binol-derived chiral monophosphites that contain a phthalic acid diamide group (PhthalaPhos) has been designed and synthesized in four steps. These new ligands were screened in the rhodium-catalyzed enantioselective hydrogenation of prochiral dehydroamino esters and enamides. Several members of the library showed excellent enantioselectivity with methyl 2-acetamido acrylate (6 ligands gave >97% ee), methyl (Z)-2-acetamido cinnamate (6 ligands gave >94% ee), and N-(1-phenylvinyl)acetamide (9 ligands gave >95% ee), whilst only a few representatives afforded high enantioselectivities for challenging and industrially relevant substrates N-(3,4-dihydronaphthalen-1-yl)-acetamide (96% ee in one case) and methyl (E)-2-(acetamidomethyl)-3-phenylacrylate (99% ee in one case). In most cases, the new ligands were more active and more stereoselective than their structurally related monodentate phosphites (which are devoid of functional groups that are capable of hydrogen-bonding interactions). Control experiments and kinetic studies were carried out that allowed us to demonstrate that hydrogen-bonding interactions involving the diamide group of the PhthalaPhos ligands strongly contribute to their outstanding catalytic properties. Computational studies carried out on a rhodium precatalyst and on a conceivable intermediate in the hydrogenation catalytic cycle shed some light on the role played by hydrogen bonding, which is likely to act in a substrate-orientation effect.