A novel one-pot synthesis of anilines from phenols was developed. Using this methodology, anilines are produced in good yield (86%) by a reaction of phenols with 2-bromo-2-methylpropionamide and NaOH in DMA via Smiles rearrangement. Phenols, which are substituted electron-withdrawing groups, are more reactive for Smiles rearrangement. Thiophenols are also converted to anilines. The process is a convenient, safe, and inexpensive method for large-scale preparation of anilines. [reaction: see text]

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A highly direct asymmetric reductive amination of a variety of ketone substrates, including 2-acetyl-6-substituted pyridines, β-keto esters, β-keto amides, and 1-(6-methylpyridin-2-yl)­propan-2-one, has been disclosed for the first time (94.6% to >99.9% ee). With ammonium trifluoroacetate as the nitrogen source, various chiral corresponding primary amines were prepared in excellent enantioselectivity and conversion in the presence of a commercially available and inexpensive chiral catalyst, Ru­(OAc)2{(S)-binap}, under 0.8 MPa of hydrogen gas pressure.

A practical synthetic method for the synthesis of the chiral benzhydrol 8, which is the key intermediate of the squalene synthase inhibitor TAK-475 (1), has been developed. The method, via asymmetric hydrogenation of the benzophenone 7, employed Noyori's ruthenium precatalyst of the type [RuCl 2 (diphosphine)(diamine)]. We focused on tuning of the chiral diphosphine, and have discovered a novel ligand, DADMP-BINAP (18c), for the catalyst that has allowed reduction of the operating pressure in the asymmetric hydrogenation. The precatalyst containing 18c performed effectively at low hydrogen pressure (<1 MPa) with sufficient enantioselectivity, and the result enabled us to successfully obtain enantiomerically pure 8 on a multikilogram scale.