Keywords: 3-alkoxycarbonylmethyl-substituted uracils and 2-thiouracils, esters of (4-oxo-3,4-dihydro-3-pyrimidinyl)acetic acids.We recently reported [1] on the possibility to synthesize compound 2 by the reaction of the corresponding 2-methylsulfanyl derivative 1 with methyl sulfanylacetate in tert-butanol in the presence of potassium tert-butoxide: N N Me Br O CH 2 COOMe SMe N N O CH 2 COOEt SMe Me N N O Br Me SCH 2 COOMe CH 2 COOMe N N Br Me O CH 2 COOEt OEt N H N CH 2 COOEt O Br Me O N H N O S CH 2 COOEt Me Br N N O CH 2 COOEt SMe Me Br HSCH 2 COOMe HSCH 2 COOMe MeI Br 2 1 7 2 3 4 5 6
t-BuOHEtOH In a continuation of the search for optimal conditions for the synthesis of the diester 2, we replaced tertbutanol as solvent by ethanol, and potassium tert-butoxide as base by potassium ethoxide. The results were very unexpected, since in this case we obtained a mixture of compounds, after isolation of which the diester 2 was __________________________________________________________________________________________