Nickel-Catalyzed Three-Component Difluoroalkylation-Amination for the Direct Access to Anti-Inflammatory
Chang Xu1, Fangting Ma1, Fan Ding1,2
1School of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Yunnan Key Laboratory of Pharmacology for Natural Products, Kunming Medical University, Kunming, Yunnan, People's Republic of China.
Abstract:
Fluoroalkyl amines represent a promising structural motif in pharmaceutical sciences, but the development of an efficient and practical synthetic method is in urgent need, especially for β-difluoroalkyl amines, in which the concurrent introduction of fluoroalkyl and aminyl groups remains challenging. Here, we report a nickel-catalyzed three-component reductive difluoroalkylation-amination strategy of enamides for the direct access to the α-amidyl-β-difluoroalkyl amines. This strategy utilizes carboamination of alkene with nitrogen electrophiles and fluoroalkyl chlorides to simultaneously forge C─C and C(sp3)-N bond, being compatible with various chlorodifluoroacetamides and nitrogen electrophiles, including amino acid-derived or drug-derived substrates. The synthetic method features with broad substrate scope, mild conditions, high functional group tolerance, and easy handling. Control experiments and DFT calculations are performed to elucidate the mechanism of the reaction, and an SH2 pathway regarding C─N bond-forming step is proposed. More remarkably, the products α-amidyl-β-difluoroalkyl amines exhibit prominent anti-inflammatory activity both in vitro and in vivo, indicating promising applications of this strategy in medicinal chemistry and drug development.
Related Concept Videos
Preparation of Amines: Reductive Amination of Aldehydes and Ketones
Preparation of 1° Amines: Gabriel Synthesis
Strong bases like NaOH or KOH deprotonate the phthalimide to form the corresponding anion, which acts as a nucleophile. Further, the anion attacks an...
Amines to Amides: Acylation of Amines
Next, the second equivalent of amine serves as a Brønsted base and deprotonates the quaternary amide...
Preparation of Amines: Alkylation of Ammonia and Amines
Each alkylation step makes the nitrogen center more nucleophilic, which triggers successive alkylations until a quaternary ammonium salt is formed. Considering...
Preparation of 1° Amines: Azide Synthesis
Azide ions act as good nucleophiles and react with unhindered alkyl halides to form alkyl azides. Alkyl azides do not participate in further nucleophilic substitution reactions, thereby eliminating the chances of polyalkylated products. Alkyl azides are reduced by hydride-based reducing agents, like lithium aluminum...
Diazonium Group Substitution with Halogens and Cyanide: Sandmeyer and Schiemann Reactions


