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Highly enantioselective chlorination of β-oxo esters and subsequent stereospecific substitution of tertiary chlorides are described. Enantioselective chlorination of β-keto esters and malonates was performed using a chiral Lewis acid catalyst prepared from Cu(OTf)(2) and the newly developed spirooxazoline ligand 2 to yield the desired α-chlorinated products with high enantioselectivity (up to 98% ee). Nucleophilic substitution of the resulting chlorides proceeded smoothly to afford a variety of chiral molecules such as α-amino, α-alkylthio, and α-fluoro esters, without loss of enantiopurity. The results of X-ray crystallographic analysis proved that Walden inversion occurs at the chlorinated tertiary carbon center. These results supported the fact that the substitution proceeds via an S(N)2 mechanism.

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Stereoselective halogenation is a highly useful organic transformation for multistep syntheses because the resulting chiral organohalides can serve as precursors for various medicinally relevant derivatives. Even though decarboxylative halogenation of aliphatic carboxylic acids is a useful and fundamental synthetic method for the preparation of a variety of organohalides, an enantioselective version of this reaction has not been reported. Here we report a highly enantioselective decarboxylative chlorination of β-ketocarboxylic acids to obtain α-chloroketones under mild organocatalytic conditions. The present method is also applicable for the enantioselective synthesis of tertiary α-chloroketones. The conversions of the resulting α-chloroketones into α-aminoketones and α-thio-substituted ketones via SN2 reactions at the tertiary carbon centres are also demonstrated. These results constitute an efficient approach for the synthesis of chiral organohalides and are expected to enhance the availability of enantiomerically enriched chiral compounds with heteroatom-substituted chiral stereogenic centres.

Highly enantioselective Diels-Alder reactions of alpha-halo-alpha,beta-unsaturated ketones with Lewis acid-activated chiral oxazaborolidine 1 are described. The reaction with alpha-fluoroenones provided the corresponding cyclohexane derivatives having a fluorinated quaternary stereogenic center with up to 99% de and 94% ee. The reaction with alpha-bromo cyclic enones provided the corresponding bromo bicyclic adducts with up to 99% de and 95% ee. A brominated cis-fused bicyclic adduct derived from 2-bromocyclopenten-1-one and Dane's diene was converted to the trans-fused bicyclic system via reductive alkylation with the bulky aluminum reagent aluminum tris(2,6-diphenylphenoxide) (ATPH). With this process, formal syntheses of (+)-estrone and norgestrel have been demonstrated.