Rhodium-Catalyzed Enantioselective Desymmetrizations of Oxabicyclic Alkenes and Alkene Difunctionalization Via Nickel-Catalyzed Arylcyanation
Author: Andy Wei Jen Yen
Publisher:
Published: 2020
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe synthesis of heterocycles using transition metal catalysis is a topic of broad interest in the field of organic chemistry. Transition metal catalysts allow many diverse bond disconnections to be realized, allowing for many ways to assemble heterocycles. Many of the transformations developed in the Lautens group are aimed at atom economical bond construction processes that streamline synthesis and minimize waste. The arylcyanation reaction and the asymmetric ring opening (ARO) reaction are two examples of methods developed in our group that embody this design principle. Chapter 1 of this thesis describes the development of a nickel-catalyzed arylcyanation reaction for the synthesis of 3,3-disubstituted oxindoles. This method was inspired by our work on the palladium-catalyzed arylcyanation reaction, originally developed to address challenges in the formal synthesis of (+)-corynoline. This nickel-catalyzed reaction uses an air-stable catalyst precursor to achieve a highly practical synthesis of a nitrile-containing oxindole via a domino Heck-cyanide capture cascade. Derivatizations of the nitrile group affords a series of novel heterocyclic scaffolds. Chapter 2 details the discovery and development of a novel enantioselective cycloisomerization reaction of oxabicyclic alkenes. Our work on developing the intramolecular asymmetric ring opening reaction led to the discovery of a novel epoxide synthesis. Specifically, when bridgehead substituted oxabicyclic alkenes with non-nucleophilic side chains are reacted with the [Rh(cod)2]OTf/PPF-PtBu2 catalyst in the absence of an external nucleophile, chiral epoxides are obtained. The synthesis of epoxides through cycloisomerization reactions possesses 100% atom economy and avoids the use of external oxidant. Chapter 3 describes an asymmetric ring opening reaction, specifically to address gaps in the methodology concerning amine nucleophiles. We were inspired by our group's previous attempts to use amino acid derived nucleophiles in the ARO reaction. We developed a way to incorporate amino acids into the ARO reaction by employing their 2-nitrobenzenesulfonamide (nosyl) derivatives as pronucleophiles. Intriguingly, we observed a divergence in reactivity between the diastereomeric hydroxyester products, in that one diastereomer was capable of lactonization and the other was not. This led to the enantioselective synthesis of chiral oxazinones, which are similar to the naphthoxazine class of compounds which possess dopaminergic activity.
