Dedicated to Professor Alfredo Ricci on the occasion of his 70th birthdayThe structural complexity and well-defined three-dimensional architecture of natural molecules are generally correlated with specificity of action and potentially useful biological properties.[1] This complexity has inspired generations of synthetic chemists to design novel enantioselective strategies for assembling challenging target structures and reproducing the rich structural diversity inherent in natural molecules. This symbiotic correlation between natural compounds synthesis and the discovery of effective asymmetric-generally catalytic [2] -technologies lies at the heart of the synthetic chemistry innovation.[3] Despite the substantial advances made thus far, the construction of highly strained polycyclic structures (particularly those that contain spiro-stereocenters) and the generation of all-carbon quaternary stereocenters still remain daunting targets for synthesis. [4,5] The spirocyclic oxindole core is featured in a number of natural products [6] as well as medicinally relevant compounds [7] (Figure 1), but its stereocontrolled synthesis, particularly installing the challenging spiro-quaternary stereocenter, poses a great synthetic problem. Only a few venerable asymmetric transformations, such as cycloaddition processes [8] or the intramolecular Heck reaction, [9] have proven suitable for achieving this challenging goal.Herein we show that asymmetric organocascade catalysis, [10] which exploits the ability of chiral amines to efficiently combine two modes of catalyst activation of carbonyl compounds (iminium and enamine catalysis) into one mechanism, [11] allows the direct, one-step synthesis of complex spirooxindolic cyclohexane derivatives; these products have three or four stereogenic carbon atoms and are obtained with extraordinary levels of stereocontrol starting from simple precursors. Specifically, we developed complementary organocatalytic multicomponent domino reactions based on two distinct organocatalysts, A and B, which efficiently activate carbonyl compounds such as ketones and aldehydes, respectively, toward multiple asymmetric transformations in a welldefined cascade sequence. Both strategies provide straightforward access to natural product inspired compound collections, [12] which would be difficult to synthesize by other enantioselective methods.
The cobalt-catalyzed alkoxylation of C(sp(2) )H bonds in aromatic and olefinic carboxamides has been developed. The reaction proceeded under mild conditions in the presence of Co(OAc)2 ⋅4H2 O as the catalyst and tolerates a wide range of both alcohols and benzamide substrates, including even olefinic carboxamides. In addition, this reaction is the first example of the direct alkoxylation of alkenes through CH bond activation.
In this study, we overcame a challenge in conventional self-assembly of macrocycles that uses ditopic 2,2':6',2″-terpyridine (tpy) building blocks with a 120° angle between two ligating moieties, which generally produces a mixture of multiple macrocycles instead of a single hexagon. Two supramolecular hexagon wreaths, [Zn9LA6] and [Zn12LB6], were designed and self-assembled from tritopic and tetratopic tpy ligands with Zn(II) ions, respectively. These multitopic ligands, bearing multiple binding sites, increased the total density of coordination sites and provided high geometric constraints to induce the formation of discrete structures. Such hexagon wreaths, which were constructed by simple recursion of small hexagons around a central hexagon, exhibit fractal geometry features with self-similarity at different levels. The shapes, sizes, and structures were fully characterized by NMR, ESI-MS, traveling-wave ion mobility mass spectrometry (TWIM-MS), and transmission electron microscopy. With diameters around 5.5 nm for [Zn9LA6] and 5.8 nm for [Zn12LB6], the remarkable rigidity of these fractal architectures was supported by TWIM-MS, in contrast to the high flexibility of macrocycles assembled by ditopic tpy ligands.
Novel iodine-induced sulfonylation and sulfenylation of imidazopyridines have been described using sodium sulfinates as the sulfur source. This strategy enables highly selective difunctionalization of imidazo[1,2-a]pyridine to access sulfones and sulfides in good yields. A wide range of substrates and functional groups were well-tolerated under optimized conditions. Moreover, control experiments have been conducted, indicating a radical pathway involved in the reaction mechanisms.
Aryl-based pincer metal complexes with anionic terdentate ligands have been widely applied in organic synthesis, organometallic catalysis and other related areas. Synthetically, the most simple and convenient method for the construction of these complexes is the direct metal-induced C(aryl)-H bond activation, which can be fulfilled by choosing the appropriate functional donor groups in the two side arms of the aryl-based pincer preligands. In this perspective, we wish to summarize some results achieved by our group in this context. Successful examples include symmetrical chiral bis(imidazoline) NCN pincer complexes with Ni(II), Pd(II) and Pt(II), bis(phosphinite) and bis(phosphoramidite) PCP pincer Pd(II) complexes, unsymmetrical (pyrazolyl)phosphinite, (amino)phosphinite and (imino)phosphinite PCN pincer Pd(II) complexes, chiral (imidazolinyl)phosphinite and (imidazolinyl)phosphoramidite PCN pincer complexes with Ni(II) and Pd(II) as well as unsymmetrical (oxazolinyl)amine and (oxazolinyl)pyrazole NCN' pincer Pd(II) complexes. Among them, the P-donor containing complexes are efficiently synthesized by the "one-pot phosphorylation/metalation" method. The obtained symmetrical and unsymmetrical pincer complexes have been used as catalysts in Suzuki-Miyaura reaction (Pd), asymmetric Friedel-Crafts alkylation of indole with trans-β-nitrostyrene (Pt) as well as in asymmetric allylation of aldehyde and sulfonimine (Pd). In the Suzuki couplings conducted at 40-50 °C, some unsymmetrical Pd complexes exhibit much higher activity than the related symmetrical ones which can be attributed to their faster release of active Pd(0) species resulting from the hemilabile coordination of the ligands. Literature results on the synthesis of some related pincer complexes as well as their activities in the above catalytic reactions are also presented.
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