Over the past decade, the Heck reaction has emerged as a particularly potent reaction for forming carbon-carbon bonds. The reaction cross-couples vinyl or aryl halides, triflates, or similar intermediates with alkenes, utilizing palladium catalysts. Bimolecular Heck reactions generally proceed efficiently only with mono-and disubstituted alkenes. However, the intramolecular variant overcomes this limitation allowing trisubstituted, and even some tetrasubstituted, alkenes to participate effectively. Quarternary carbon centers, which typically are difficult to construct, can be effectively fashioned by intramolecular Heck insertions. Although there are scattered examples of forming small, medium, and large rings by thls reaction, five-, six-, and seven-membered rings are formed most efficiently. Hallmarks of intramolecular Heck reactions are excellent functional group tolerance and predictible regio-and stereochemistry. A telling indication of the utility of intramolecular Heck reactions in preparative organic chemistry is their recent use as the key step in the synthesis of many complex natural products. The Heck reaction has been thoroughly reviewed. However, this review will attempt to fill a more specialized niche: namely, the utility of the intramolecular Heck reaction in natural product synthesis [ 11.
Mechanistic OutlineTwo mechanistic variants, termed the "neutral" and "cationic pathways", are presumed to govern Heck reactions. A mechanism for a Heck substitution reaction proceeding via the "neutral pathway" is depicted in Scheme 6-1 [2]. The active catalyst is a coodinatively unsaturated 1Celectron palladium complex 3, which most commonly has two phosphine ligands. In the case of tetrakis(triphenylphosphine)palladium(O), the active catalyst is generated in situ by the loss of two phosphine ligands, 1 + 2 + 3 (L= triphenylphosphine). Oxidative addition of a vinyl or aryl halide then provides palladium(I1) intermediate 4. Loss of a ligand, coordination of an alkene, syn insertion, and recoordination of ligand then yields u-alkylpalladium complex 5. Internal rotation to provide 6 and syn B-hydride elimination provide alkene 7 and the hydridopalladium complex 8. A stoichiometric amount of base then regenerates the active catalyst 3.When the substrate is a triflate, or the reaction of halide substrates is carried out in the presence of halide scavengers, a variant of this mechanism in which the palladium(I1) intermediates are cationic is followed [lg, 31. The "cationic pathway" is illustrated in Scheme 6-2. Oxidative addition yields the palladium(I1) intermediate 9 and loss of the 23 1Metal-catalyzed Cross-coupling Reactions Edited by François Diederich, Peter J. Stang