Multiple Chiral Centers Research Articles

Domino Reactions through Recursive Anionic Cascades: The Advantageous Use of Nitronates

AbstractRecursive Anionic Cyclization (RAC) continues to proliferate as a mechanistically distinct domino strategy. Deployment of nitroalkanes as a source of recursive carbanions has created a niche operating space for generating molecular complexity and diversity. This new corollary i. e. recursive nitronate cyclization is the basis of a domino [5 C+1 C] cyclization strategy wherein nitroalkanes act as one‐carbon lynchpin, providing rapid access to topologically intriguing, densely functionalized carbo‐ and heterocycles embodying multiple chiral centers with regio‐, stereo‐ and enantioselectivity. Extension to aromatic domains, particularly via benzannulation reactions, has further consolidated the operating space. While leveraging the functional versatility of nitro group for post‐domino modifications, such endeavors have culminated in total synthesis of diverse natural products. An incisive analysis of recursive nitronate cyclizations and their emergent potentials is delineated in this review. It is hoped that this focused narrative will enthuse and draw new practitioners to the arena to advance the field.

A Computational Protocol for Vibrational Circular Dichroism Spectra of Cyclic Oligopeptides.

Cyclic peptides are a promising class of compounds for next-generation antibiotics as they may provide new ways of limiting antibiotic resistance development. Although their cyclic structure will introduce some rigidity, their conformational space is large and they usually have multiple chiral centers that give rise to a wide range of possible stereoisomers. Chiroptical spectroscopies such as vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) are used to assign stereochemistry and discriminate enantiomers of chiral molecules, often in combination with electronic structure methods. The reliable determination of the absolute configuration of cyclic peptides will require robust computational methods than can identify all significant conformers and their relative population and reliably assign their stereochemistry from their chiroptical spectra by comparison with ab initio calculated spectra. We here present a computational protocol for the accurate calculation of the VCD spectra of a series of flexible cyclic oligopeptides. The protocol builds on the Conformer-Rotamer Ensemble Sampling Tool (CREST) developed by Grimme and co-workers (Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys.2020, 22, 7169−719232073075 and J. Chem. Theory. Comput.2019, 15, 2847–286230943025) in combination with postoptimizations using B3LYP and moderately sized basis sets. Our recommended computational protocol for the computation of VCD spectra of cyclic oligopeptides consists of three steps: (1) conformational sampling with CREST and tight-binding density functional theory (xTB); (2) energy ranking based on single-point energy calculations as well as geometry optimization and VCD calculations of conformers that are within 2.5 kcal/mol of the most stable conformer using B3LYP/6-31+G*/CPCM; and (3) VCD spectra generation based on Boltzmann weighting with Gibbs free energies. Our protocol provides a feasible basis for generating VCD spectra also for larger cyclic peptides of biological/pharmaceutical interest and can thus be used to investigate promising compounds for next-generation antibiotics.

Bicyclic thiaspiro[4.n]alkanones: Investigating their total stereochemistry achieved by the catalyst-free sulfa-Michael reaction

A series of twenty-two examples of bicyclic 1-aryl-4‑hydroxy-2-thiaspiro[4.n]alkanones (3, 4), where aryl = phenyl, 4-CH3OC6H4, 4-NO2C6H4, 4-FC6H4, 4-ClC6H4, 4-CH3C6H4,1-naphthyl, 4-N(CH3)2C6H4, and n = 4, 5 were obtained from a catalyst-free sulfa-Michael reaction in refluxing ethanol as a solvent at up to 98% of yield, starting from the readily available 2-arylidene-cycloalkanones (1) and 1,4-dithian-2,5-diol (2) as the precursors. Vinyl ketones 1 were synthesized by reacting simple cyclopentanone and cyclohexanone with aryl aldehydes through well-established procedures. Subsequently, efforts were devoted to isolation, structural characterization by NMR and SC-XRD techniques, and configuration assignment to identify diastereomers containing multiple chiral centers at the bicyclic scaffolds (3, 4), which were presented, discussed, and compared to precedent studies for 1-tetralone and 1-indanone analogues.

Recent Progress in the Selective Fluorinations of Some Functionalized Cycloalkenes

AbstractOrganofluorine compounds have had an increasing impact in synthetic organic chemistry and pharmaceutical research over the past two decades. Their syntheses and the development of novel synthetic approaches towards versatile fluorinated small molecules have received great interest. Our research team has designed various selective and stereocontrolled methods for the construction of fluorine‐containing small molecular entities, involving the transformation of various functionalized cycloalkenes across their ring olefin bond. The synthetic methodologies developed to access various pharmacologically interesting fluorinated derivatives with multiple chiral centers might be valuable protocols for the preparation of other classes of organic compounds as well.

Approaches to Configuration Determinations of Flexible Marine Natural Products: Advances and Prospects.

Flexible marine natural products (MNPs), such as eribulin and bryostatin, play an important role in the development of modern marine drugs. However, due to the multiple chiral centers and geometrical uncertainty of flexible systems, configuration determinations of flexible MNPs face great challenges, which, in turn, have led to obstacles in druggability research. To resolve this issue, the comprehensive use of multiple methods is necessary. Additionally, configuration assignment methods, such as X-ray single-crystal diffraction (crystalline derivatives, crystallization chaperones, and crystalline sponges), NMR-based methods (JBCA and Mosher’s method), circular dichroism-based methods (ECCD and ICD), quantum computational chemistry-based methods (NMR calculations, ECD calculations, and VCD calculations), and chemical transformation-based methods should be summarized. This paper reviews the basic principles, characteristics, and applicability of the methods mentioned above as well as application examples to broaden the research and applications of these methods and to provide a reference for the configuration determinations of flexible MNPs.

Synthetic Applications of Prins Cyclization in Natural Product Syntheses

The natural products having tetrahydropyran unit with multiple chiral centers serve as magnificent building blocks for various active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). 'Prins cyclization is one of the wonderful strategies to construct tetrahydropyran unit stereoselectively in asymmetric synthesis. In this account, we discuss our research efforts toward the synthesis of various natural products from the past two decades (2005-2020) by using Prins cyclization as a key step. Further, the synthetic utility of this reaction was investigated and well demonstrated on various molecules successfully.

Umpolung carbonyls enable direct allylation and olefination of carbohydrates.

Mother Nature has its own arts to build a vast number of carbohydrates; however, there is still a lack of tools for selective functionalization of native carbohydrates through C─C bond formation. Such a long-standing challenge for the synthetic community lies into the intrinsic problems related to the innate properties of carbohydrates, e.g., the ease to oligomerization or polymerization, the difficulty of chemoselectivity control in the presence of multiple hydroxyl groups, the great challenge to retain the multiple chiral centers during the transformation, etc. Here, by applying an umpolung strategy of carbohydrate carbonyls, we report a direct deoxygenative allylation and olefination of carbohydrates to tackle the abovementioned issues. The reaction is compatible with a wide range of natural carbohydrates, providing a direct synthetic method to use carbohydrates as multiple C-centered chiral synthons to achieve C─C bond cross-coupling reactions. Furthermore, the synthetic applicability is demonstrated by late-stage modifications of natural products and pharmaceutical derivatives.

Detecting multiple chiral centers in chiral molecules with high harmonic generation.

Characterizing chiral is highly important for applications in the pharmaceutical industry, as well as in the study of dynamical chemical and biological systems. However, this task has remained challenging, especially due to the ongoing increasing complexity and size of the molecular structure of drugs and active compounds. In particular, large molecules with many active chiral centers are today ubiquitous, but remain difficult to structurally analyze due to their high number of stereoisomers. Here we theoretically explore the sensitivity of high harmonic generation (HHG) to the chiral of molecules with a varying number of active chiral centers. We find that HHG driven by bi-chromatic non-collinear lasers is a sensitive probe for the stereo-configuration of a chiral molecule. We first show through calculations (from benchmark chiral molecules with up to three chiral centers) that the HHG spectrum is imprinted with information about the handedness of each chiral center in the driven molecule. Next, we show that using both classical- and deep-learning-based reconstruction algorithms, the composition of an unknown mixture of stereoisomers can be reconstructed with high fidelity by a single-shot HHG measurement. Our work illustrates how the combination of non-linear optics and machine learning might open routes for ultra-sensitive sensing in chiral systems.

Organoboron Compounds Towards Asymmetric Pericyclic Reaction; Exploitation to Bioactive Molecule Synthesis

AbstractOrganic frameworks containing boron as one of the units have wide application in organic synthesis. Due to the non‐toxicity and cheap accessibility, the organoboron compounds have gained increased demand towards the organic chemist. Besides, there has been a huge progress in the area of chiral organoboron synthesis, which allows direct access to chiral synthons. Among other methods developed for the asymmetric synthesis of organoboron compounds, pericyclic reaction plays an important role. Cycloaddition reactions using vinyl boronic esters have been extensively reported for the synthesis of cyclic boronic esters. Asymmetric cycloaddition using organoboron compound opens a quick access to various intermediates with multiple chiral centers, which has been utilized for the total synthesis of bioactive molecules. This mini‐review outlines various asymmetric pericyclic reactions developed to date demonstrating its applicability towards bioactive molecule synthesis.

Wide-Range and Highly Sensitive Chiral Sensing by Discrete 2D Chirality Transfer on Confined Surfaces of Au(I)-Thiolate Nanosheets.

Circular dichroism (CD) chiral sensing is very promising to meet the ever-increasing demands for high-throughput chiral analysis in asymmetric synthesis. However, it is still very challenging to sensitively quantify the composition of enantiomers in a wide concentration range because the existing sensing systems show either linear CD response resultant from stoichiometric chiral transfer or nonlinear CD response resultant from amplified chiral transfer and thus have the drawbacks of low sensitivity and narrow quantification range, respectively. Herein, we propose a sensing system of two-dimensional (2D) Au(I)-thiolate nanosheets. The disordered interligand interactions on the confined surfaces of nanosheets enable the formation of discrete amplified chiral domains around the adsorbed chiral analytes, resulting in a linearly amplified chiral transfer behavior, which provides a solution for highly sensitive and wide-range quantification of enantiomer compositions. Taking (1R, 2R)-(-)- and (1S, 2S)-(+)-1,2-diamino cyclohexanes as example analytes, the concentration and full-range enantiomeric excess (ee) values have been quickly determined by adsorbing them on the surface of Au(I)-MPA (MPA: 3-mercaptopropionic acid) nanosheets in the concentration range of 1.0 × 10-6 to 4.0 × 10-5 M. By engineering the surface functional groups, Au(I)-thiolate nanosheets can be extended to sense other types of analytes, and several polyols with multiple chiral centers have been sensed by boronic acid functionalized nanosheets at the 10-7 M level. The high performances, good extendibility, and one-pot high-yield aqueous synthesis ensure these Au(I)-thiolate nanosheets can be developed as a practical and powerful chiral sensing platform.

Privileged Biorenewable Secologanin-Based Diversity-Oriented Synthesis for Pseudo-Natural Alkaloids: Uncovering Novel Neuroprotective and Antimalarial Frameworks.

Bioprivileged molecules hold great promise for supplementing petrochemicals in sustainable organic synthesis of a diverse bioactive products library. Secologanin, a biorenewable monoterpenoid glucoside with unique structural elements, is the key precursor for thousands of natural monoterpenoid alkaloids. Inspired by its inherent highly congested functional groups, a secologanin-based diversity-oriented synthesis (DOS) strategy for novel pseudo-natural alkaloids was developed. All the reactive units of secologanin were involved in these operation simplicity protocols under mild reaction conditions, including the one-step enantioselective transformation of exocyclic C8, C8/C11, and C8/C9/C10 as well as the chemoenzymatic manipulation of endocyclic C2/C6 via the attack by various nucleophiles. A combinatory scenario of the aforementioned reactions further provided diverse polycyclic products with multiple chiral centers. Preliminary activity screening of these newly constructed molecules led to the discovery of antimalarial and highly potent neuroprotective skeletons. The application of green biorenewable secologanin in diversity-oriented pseudo-natural monoterpenoid alkaloid synthesis might encourage the pursuit of valuable bioactive frameworks.

Selective Transformation of Norbornadiene into Functionalized Azaheterocycles and β‐Amino Esters with Stereo‐ and Regiocontrol

Novel functionalized azaheterocycles with multiple chiral centers have been accessed from readily available norbornene β-amino acids or β-lactams across a stereocontrolled synthetic route, based on ring-opening metathesis (ROM) of the staring unsaturated bicyclic amino esters, followed by selective cyclization through ring-closing metathesis (RCM). The RCM transformations have been studied under various experimental conditions to assess the scope of conversion, catalyst, yield, and substrate influence. The structure of the starting norbornene β-amino acids predetermined the structure of the new azaheterocycles, and the developed synthetic route took place with the conservation of the configuration of the chiral centers.

Discovery of IDO1 inhibitors containing a decahydroquinoline, decahydro-1,6-naphthyridine, or octahydro-1H-pyrrolo[3,2-c]pyridine scaffold

A series of IDO1 inhibitors containing a decahydroquinoline, decahydro-1,6-naphthyridine, or octahydro-1H-pyrrolo[3,2-c]pyridine scaffold were identified with good cellular and human whole blood activity against IDO1. These inhibitors contain multiple chiral centers and all diastereomers were separated. The absolute stereochemistry of each isomers were not determined. Compounds 15 and 27 stood out as leads due to their good cellular as well as human whole blood IDO1 inhibition activity, low unbound clearance, and reasonable mean residence time in rat cassette PK studies.

Recent Developments in Enantioselective Organocatalytic Cascade Reactions for the Construction of Halogenated Ring Systems

AbstractChiral halogenated substances have many applications in pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, and materials, such as polymers, liquid crystals and as intermediates in synthesis. The presence of a halogen atom in a molecule can have a large effect in its properties; for instance, halogens are used in drugs to improve lipophilicity, membrane permeability and absorption, and even the blood‐brain barrier permeability. As highlighted in this review, there are nowadays a range of highly selective, versatile halogenating reagents, electrophilic, nucleophilic or radical in nature, which operate under mild conditions, allowing late‐stage functionalization of complex molecules in cascade reactions. Recent developments in organocatalyst design revealed novel Cinchona alkaloids derivatives, chiral phosphoric acids, amines, phosphines and several bifunctional catalysts, mostly thiourea‐ or squaramide‐based, which introduced chirality, with high levels of enantio‐ and diastereoselection, in the formation of one or multiple chiral centers in a single synthetic operation, as shown. In this review we survey the literature published in this field from 2014 to 2020.

Enantioselective Domino Reaction of 3-Vinylindole and p-Quinone Methides Enabled by Chiral Imidodiphosphoric Acids: Asymmetric Synthesis of Multisubstituted 3-Indolyl Cyclopenta[b]indoles.

The development of a stereoselective method for the rapid assembly of structurally complex molecules remains fascinating and challenging in synthetic organic chemistry. Here, we report an enantioselective domino reaction between 3-vinylindole and p-quinone methide for the preparation of 3-indolyl cyclopenta[b]indoles containing multiple chiral centers. Chiral imidodiphosphoric acids enable this cascade asymmetric process, delivering a series of products with excellent yields (≤99%), enantioselectivities (≤99%), and diastereoselectivities (≤20:1 dr).

Supercritical fluid chromatography and liquid chromatography for isomeric separation of a multiple chiral centers analyte

The development of a chiral separation strategy has always been a challenge of crucial importance, particularly in the pharmaceutical field. Chromatographic methods have become popular, particularly High Performance Liquid Chromatography and Supercritical Fluid Chromatography from a preparative scale point of view. A bioactive compound bearing three stereogenic centers was entrusted in our laboratory and the aim of this work was to obtain the complete resolution of the eight stereoisomers. Nine different polysaccharide-based columns were tested in SFC under various carbon dioxide-based mobile phases. The use of a single chiral column Lux Cellulose-2 under 30% 2-PrOH in carbon dioxide, at a flow-rate of 1 mL/min, column temperature of 40°C, 120 bar outlet pressure allowed the obtention of eight peaks. To further improve the resolution of the two last isomers, two columns were serially coupled . The results obtained with the six different combinations are discussed. The tandem column supercritical fluid chromatography has demonstrated to be a useful technique to resolve the eight stereoisomers on Lux Cellulose-2//Cellulose-2 tandem of coupled columns with 30% 2-PrOH in carbon dioxide, at a flow-rate of 1 mL/min, column temperature of 40°C and 120 bar outlet pressure, despite a long analysis time. In order to compare the two methods (i.e supercritical and liquid), chiral liquid chromatography under polar aqueous-organic mode, polar organic mode and normal-phase mode, was implemented. The last mode allowed the full baseline resolution of the eight isomers on Cellulose-5 CSP, with 20% 2-PrOH in n-heptane at a flow-rate of 0.8 mL/min, at 25°C, λ=220 nm. The limits of detection and of quantification were determined for this method and the best values obtained for isomer 8 were equal to 2.84 and 9.37 nM respectively. Finally, a small-scale preparative separation of the multiple chiral centers compound was implemented on Cellulose-5 CSP within 10% 2-PrOH in n-heptane in order to study the stereoisomer elution order on Cellulose-2, Cellulose-5 and Chiralpak AD-H, under EtOH or 2-PrOH in n-heptane mobile phases, and partial reversal elution orders were observed.

Organocatalytic Enantioselective Desymmetrization of Prochiral 2,2‐Disubstituted Cyclic 1,3‐Diones

AbstractEnantioselective desymmetrization of prochiral 1,3‐cyclodiketones is the most convenient and highly desired transformation to access densely functionalized, enantiomerically enriched scaffolds with multiple chiral centers. In recent years, organocatalysis has made significant progress in this research area along with other traditional metal‐ or enzyme‐catalyzed reactions. This mini‐review provides an overview of the recent developments in the domain of organocatalytic enantioselective desymmetrization along with a brief discussion about future perspectives.

The study of the chromatographic behavior and a mass spectrometric approach to differentiating the diastereomer pair of the β-O-4 lignin dimer series.

Ligninand lignans are natural products found in plant cell walls. Lignin research has historically focused on lignin degradation techniques in the hope of converting lignin into useful aromatic carbon feedstocks. In contrast, investigations oflignans existing as natural product dimers, havebeen focused on thier interesting biological activities. Many lignan compounds are chemically identical to dimers derived from lignin, and both lignin and lignan dimers can possess multiple chiral centers leading to observations of diastereomer pairs where one diastereomer exhibits the bulk of the activity. For example, the G-(β-O-4')-G dimer was reported to have a pro-angiogenic activity with one diastereomer of the pair showing enhanced pro-angiogenic activity. Traditional analytical techniques such as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) can differentiate the diastereomer pairs of β-O-4 compounds; however, isolation of a pure sample is often required for analysis. This work was aimed at exploring the potential use of tandem mass spectrometry to differentiate diastereomer pairs in the β-O-4 dimer series. Each diastereomer pair in the nine-dimer series was separated by HPLC and interrogated by tandem mass spectrometry. To understand the chromatographic behavior of the diastereomer pair in the β-O-4 dimer series, three commercially available reverse phase HPLC columns were evaluated. A temperature programming experiment using water/acetonitrile isocratic elution showed that the chromatographic retention mechanism of these diastereomers was hydrophobically driven with analytes having more methoxy groups exhibiting larger ΔH0 and higher octanol-water partition coefficient values. Tandem mass spectrometry performed on each of the diastereomers produced fragment ions having different ion abundances. A mechanistic study based on the ion abundance of "sequence-specific ions" and "-48 ions" was used to assign a configuration to each of the pairs of diastereomers in the nine-dimer series.

Site‐specifically Incorporated Non‐Canonical Amino Acids into Pseudomonas alcaligenes Lipase to Hydrolyze L‐menthol Propionate among the Eight Isomers

AbstractIt remains a challenge to improve the diastereopreference of enzymes when there are multiple chiral centers in the substrate, mainly because the limited understanding of mechanism determining diastereoselectivity. Compared with natural amino acids, non‐canonical amino acids (ncAAs) provide side chains with wider range of functional groups and genetically encoded ncAAs have been applied in probing the complex enzyme mechanisms, improving catalytic activity, and even designing enzymes with new catalytic mechanisms. Here, the ncAAs were site‐specifically incorporated into a lipase (PaL) produced by Pseudomonas alcaligenes to explore its diastereopreference mechanism. Menthol propionate has three chiral centers, eight isomers in total. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations were first applied to analyze the interactions between the active sites of PaL and the target substrate L‐menthol propionate. Furthermore, the four ncAAs (o‐bromophenylalanine, o‐chlorophenylalanine, p‐cyanophenylalanine and p‐aminophenylalanine) were substituted for 9 amino acids sites that potentially influenced three chiral centers and several variants with significant improvement in the diastereopreference were obtained. The diastereomer selectivity of beat variant at Ala253 was 100 % higher than that of the wild‐type. A linear relationship was found between volume, flexibility of the active center and diastereoselectivity.

One-Pot Enantioselective Construction of Polycyclic Tetrahydroquinoline Scaffolds through Asymmetric Organo/Photoredox Catalysis via Triple-Reaction Sequence.

A novel one-pot triple-reaction strategy for the asymmetric construction of polycyclic skeletons with multiple consecutive chiral centers through aza-Michael/Michael/Wittig/ketyl radical addition/esterification processes is reported. A wide range of polycyclic tetrahydroquinoline derivatives were smoothly obtained from easily available starting materials with good results (up to 80% yield, >20:1 dr, >99% ee) under mild conditions. In this transformation, five chemical bonds and five consecutive chiral centers were successively formed.