Highly enantioselective catalytic reduction of ketones

ORGN 531

Hans Adolfsson, Anders Bøgevig, Patrik Västilä, and Isidro M Pastor. Department of Organic Chemistry, Stockholm University, Stockholm, SE-10691, Sweden
We have developed a novel class of pseudo-dipeptide ligands for the ruthenium-catalyzed enantioselective reduction of ketones under transfer hydrogenation conditions. The ligands were readily prepared from protected amino acids and vicinal amino alcohols. The simplicity and the high modularity of the ligands combined with the availability of starting materials for their preparation make them perfect for fine-tuning reactivity and selectivity for specific substrates. Herein we report on the formation of dipeptide-ligand libraries, and the evaluation of these libraries in the reduction of ketones. High catalytic activity and excellent enantioselectivity (up to 98% ee) was obtained with the optimum catalysts.
 

Asymmetric Reactions and Syntheses
1:00 PM-5:00 PM, Wednesday, March 31, 2004 Anaheim Convention Center -- 303D, Oral

Division of Organic Chemistry

The 227th ACS National Meeting, Anaheim, CA, March 28-April 1, 2004