Starting from aspartic acid a stereoselective synthesis of enantiomerically pure 4-aminopiperidin-2-ones which can serve as conformationally restrained ß-amino acid equivalents in peptidomimetics is described. The synthesis is based on the regioselective functionalization of the 1,4-bis-electrophile 2b and a diastereoselective introduction of various side chain equivalents into the lactam α-position of 4b,c.Conformationally locked peptide surrogates have been utilized extensively in the design and development of enzyme inhibitors or neuroreceptor ligands. [1][2][3][4] This strategy afforded valuable information regarding the elucidation of the biologically active conformation of peptides and led to drug candidates with remarkable affinity, selectivity and metabolic stability. 5 Among the numerous developments in this field, incorporating the α-amino carboxamide moiety of a peptide backbone into a Freidinger lactam (I) has proven very successful. 6-10 On the other hand, ß-amino acid derived substructures and the investigation of ß-peptides led to interesting peptidomimetics. 11-13 As far as we know, a combination of these two strategies was not reported yet.As part of our efforts on the synthesis of enantiopure ß-amino acid derivatives, 14,15 here we report the first stereoselective synthesis of 4-aminopiperidin-2-ones as lactam-bridged analogs with a ß-amino carboxamide substructure (Homo-Freidinger lactams, II). Applying this approach, our initial results on lactam-constrained mimetics of the dopamine receptor modulating peptide Pro-Leu-Gly-NH 2 16 are presented.The synthesis of a N-protected 4-aminopiperidine in enantiomerically pure form was planned starting from natural aspartic acid (1). Taking advantage of our recently described methodology we were able to functionalize regioselectively the dibenzyl protected aminobutanediol 2a. [17][18][19][20] Thus, activation of 2a by MesCl gave the bis-electrophile 2b which could be transformed into the azido nitrile 3a by subsequent substitution with LiCN and NaN 3 . Due to an activating anchimeric participation of the dibenzylamino group the leaving group in position 1 is exclusively displaced by the nucleophile which is added first. The formation of regioisomers was not observed. Chemoselective reduction of the azide functionality in the presence of the nitrile group was accomplished under Staudinger conditions 21 giving the amino nitrile 3b in 81 % yield. Alternatively, a more direct preparation of 3b is possible when liquid NH 3 is used as the "second nucleophile" instead of NaN 3 . 22