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Cooperative Hydrogen-Bond-Donor Catalysis with Hydrogen Chloride Enables Highly Enantioselective Prins Cyclization
Dennis A Kutateladze1, Eric N Jacobsen1
1Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, United States.
Abstract:
Cooperative asymmetric catalysis with hydrogen chloride (HCl) and chiral dual-hydrogen-bond donors (HBDs) is applied successfully to highly enantioselective Prins cyclization reactions of a wide variety of simple alkenyl aldehydes. The optimal chiral catalysts were designed to withstand the strongly acidic reaction conditions and were found to induce rate accelerations of 2 orders of magnitude over reactions catalyzed by HCl alone. We propose that the combination of strong mineral acids and chiral hydrogen-bond-donor catalysts may represent a general strategy for inducing enantioselectivity in reactions that require highly acidic conditions.
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