The asymmetric synthesis of (-)-swainsonine via a nonchiral pool route that involves the Sharpless epoxidation to induce chirality is reported. The key steps involve vinyl epoxide aminolysis, ring-closing metathesis, and intramolecular N-alkylation to prepare the indolizidine ring and a highly diastereoselective cis-dihydroxylation using AD-mix-alpha. This synthetic strategy also allowed for the diastereoselective synthesis of (+)-1,2-di-epi-swainsonine and (+)-1,2,8-tri-epi-swainsonine.
The treatment of chiral sulfinimines with (methyldiphenylsilyl)lithium gives alpha-(methyldiphenylsilyl)sulfinamides with excellent diastereoselectivity, and in good yield. The presence of alpha-protons on the imines is also well tolerated. The sulfinamide auxiliary is easily removed via treatment with methanolic HCl and the resulting amine extended into peptide chains accordingly. The diphenylsilyl moiety is a resilient protecting group for the corresponding silanediol, which can be unmasked via treatment with TfOH, followed by aqueous hydrolysis. The crude silanediol may be isolated and purified as its corresponding bis-TMS siloxane via protection with TMSCl, and converted back to the desired silanediol via hydrolysis with aqueous KOH. Efforts to apply this approach to biologically relevant silanediol peptide mimics, with a view to protease inhibition, are described.
An efficient method for preparing conformationally restricted cyclopentenyl-glutamate analogues in a regioselective and diastereoselective manner has been developed using a formal [3 + 2] cycloaddition reaction of dehydroamino acids. Methods for preparing optically active versions of these compounds have also been devised. Of these compounds, (S)-2 is an agonist at the mGlu5 (EC(50) 18 microM) and mGlu2 (EC(50) 45 microM) receptors.
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