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In the past decade there has been a significant growth in the sales of pharmaceutical drugs worldwide, but more importantly there has been a dramatic growth in the sales of single enantiomer drugs. The pharmaceutical industry has a rising demand for chiral intermediates and research reagents because of the continuing imperative to improve drug efficacy. This in turn impacts on researchers involved in preclinical discovery work. Besides traditional chiral pool and resolution of racemates as sources of chiral building blocks, many new synthetic methods including a great variety of catalytic reactions have been developed which facilitate the production of complex chiral drug candidates for clinical trials. The most ambitious technique is to synthesise homochiral compounds from non-chiral starting materials using chiral metal catalysts and related chemistry. Examples of the synthesis of chiral building blocks from achiral materials utilizing asymmetric hydrogenation and asymmetric epoxidation are presented.

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A high-yielding, stereoselective synthesis of scymnol 1 has been carried out in five steps starting from commercially available cholic acid 2. The synthesis was designed with the aim of eventual large-scale processing. Triformyloxycholic acid chloride 4 was treated with the magnesium enolate of diethyl malonate to afford the β-keto diester, diethyl 3α,7α,12α-triformyloxy-24-oxo-5β-cholestane-26,27-dioate 5. The key step in the synthesis was the stereoselective hydrogenation of β-keto diester 5 to give the corresponding β-hydroxy diester 6 using a BINAP ruthenium(ii) catalyst. Subsequent reduction of the diester moiety and deprotection of the hydroxyl groups afforded scymnol 1.

Abstract:The synthesis of (2S)-2-benzyloxymethyl-3-(2-fluoro-4-methoxyphenyl)-propionic acid, (2S)-2-benzyloxymethyl-3-(2-fluoro-4-methylphenyl)propionic acid and (2S)-2-benzyl-oxymethyl-3-(2,4-dimethylphenyl)propionic acid has been achieved by TiCl 4 mediated alkylation of the corresponding (4R)-4-benzyl-3-[3-(2-fluoro-4-methoxyphenyl-, 2-fluoro-4-methylphenyl-, 2,4-dimethylphenyl-)propionyl]-2-oxazolidinones, followed by hydrolysis of the chiral auxiliary. The stereochemistry of the alkylation reaction was confirmed by an X-ray crystal structure of (4R)-4-benzyl-3-[(2S)-2-benzyloxymethyl-3-(2-fluoro-4-methylphenyl)propionyl]-2-oxazolidinone.