The 1,1'-bi-2-naphthol-ZnEt2-Ti(O(i)Pr)4-Cy2NH system is found to catalyze the 1,3-enyne addition to aliphatic aldehydes as well as other aldehydes at room temperature with 75-96% yield and 82-97% ee. This system is also broadly applicable for the highly enantioselective reaction of other alkyl-, aryl-, and silylalkynes with structurally diverse aldehydes. The propargylic alcohols prepared from the catalytic asymmetric enyne addition to aliphatic aldehydes are used to prepare a series of optically active trienynes. In the presence of a catalytic amount of [RhCl(CO)2]2 and 1 atm of CO, the optically active trienynes undergo highly stereoselective domino Pauson-Khand/[4 + 2] cycloaddition to generate optically active multicyclic products. The Rh(I) catalyst is also found to catalyze the coupling of a diyne with CO followed by [4 + 2] cycloaddition to generate an optically active multicyclic product. These transformations are potentially useful for the asymmetric synthesis of polyquinanes containing a quaternary chiral carbon center.

This article presents a new strategy for achieving regiocontrol over the endo versus exo modes of cycloisomerizations of epoxide‐containing alcohols, which leads to the formation of five‐ or six‐membered cyclic ethers. Unlike traditional methods relying on achiral reagents or enzymes, this approach utilizes chiral phosphoric acids to catalyze the regiodivergent selective formations of either tetrahydrofuran‐ or tetrahydropyran‐containing products. By using methyl ester of epoxide‐containing antibiotic mupirocin as the substrate, it is demonstrated that catalytic chiral phosphoric acids (R)‐TCYP and (S)‐TIPSY could be used to achieve the selective formation of either the six‐membered endo product (95:5 r.r.) or the five‐membered exo product (77:23 r.r.), correspondingly. This cyclization was found to be unselective under the standard conditions involving various achiral acids, bases, or buffers. The subsequent mechanistic studies using state‐of‐the‐art quantum chemical solutions provided the description of the potential energy surface, which is fully consistent with the experimental observations. Based on these results, highly detailed reaction paths are obtained and a concerted and highly synchronous mechanism is proposed for the formation of both exo and endo products.

Highly chemoselective and stereoselective tandem Pauson-Khand/[4+2] cycloaddition leads to efficient construction of the spirotricyclic core analogue of mangicol A.

This manuscript describes a single pot protocol for the selective introduction of unprotected sugars to the C3 position of the cardiotonic steroid strophanthidol. These reactions proceed with high levels of regiocontrol (>20:1 rr) in the presence of three other hydroxyl functionalities including the C19 primary hydroxyl group and could be applied to different sugars to provide the deprotected cardiac glycosides upon work up (5 examples, 77–69% yield per single operation). The selective glycosylation of the less reactive C3 position is accomplished by the use of traceless protection with methylboronic acid that blocks the C5 and C19 hydroxyls by forming a cyclic boronic ester, followed by in situ glycosylation and a work up with ammonia in methanol to remove the boronic ester and the carbohydrate ester protecting groups.

A class of alkenyl propargyl acetates, RCH(OAc)C≡CC(CH(3))═CH(2) (5), are found to undergo [4 + 1] cycloaddition with CO (1 atm) in the presence of [RhCl(CO)(2)](2) in refluxing 1,2-dichloroethane to give cyclopentenones (6) in good yields. It has been demonstrated that, when the R group of 5 is a phenyl group bearing o-electron-withdrawing substituents, up to 10:1 diastereoselectivity and 96% yield can be achieved for the [4 + 1] cycloaddition. This process provides a convenient method to construct highly functionalized cyclopentenones that are useful in organic synthesis.