“…Inthe past decade,a zomethine imines have been intensely studied in the field of asymmetric catalysis.T hese versatile compounds are well known as substrates in 1,3-dipolar cycloadditions and nucleophilic additions,aswell as directing groups and bifunctional catalysts. [1] In 2003, Shintani and Fu reported the first example of asymmetric catalysis with azomethine imines,where they described the enantioselective cycloaddition of prochiral N,N'-cyclic azomethine imines. [2] Since this report, there have been many examples of catalytic stereoselective reactions with N,N'-cyclic azomethine imines (1;see Scheme 1), [3] thus establishing their value as precursors to pyrazolidinones,h ydrazines,a nd b-aminocarbonyl compounds.H owever,b ecause of the difficult synthesis of structurally diverse azomethine imines,t he scope of these reactions is limited to simple and achiral substrates.W hile simple azomethine imines can be synthesized by the condensation of pyrazolidinones onto aldehydes,t he complex and ketone-derived 1 are typically inaccessible.…”