Three-component aza-Diels-Alder reactions involving aromatic aldehydes, aromatic amines, and dihydropyran or dihydrofuran are effectively catalyzed by samarium diiodide to afford pyrano[3,2-c]-or furano [3,2-c]quinolines in good yields and with high stereoselectivities. Either the cis or the
IntroductionThe tetrahydroquinoline skeleton exists in many natural or synthetic biologically active materials, and its derivatives are widely applied in the pharmaceutical and biochemical fields.[1] Some of them, such as pyrano-and furanoquinolines, have attracted special attention as a result of their high degrees of structural diversity and wide spectra of biological actions.[2] The [4+2] cycloaddition reactions between N-arylimines (heterodienes) and dihydropyran or dihydrofuran (dienophiles) under Lewis acid catalysis conditions have long been recognized as one of the most convenient methods for the synthesis of quinolines of this type and have been explored for catalysts, scope, and applications.[3] However, most of the imines used as starting materials are unstable, which leads to difficulties in their isolation and purification. In this connection, much attention has been focused on three-component aza-Diels-Alder reactions involving aldehyde, amine, and either dihydropyran or dihydrofuran. A series of Lewis acids such as Ln-(OTf) 3 , [4] GdCl 3 , [5] molecular iodine, [6] TMSCl, [7] SbCl 3 , [8] and Selectfluor TM [9] have been found to be effective catalysts for this purpose. Normally, the process affords the products as mixtures of cis and trans isomers, in which the trans isomer is the major one in most cases. It is noteworthy that the use of Lewis acids as catalysts in one-pot reactions to prepare the tetrahydroquinolines stereoselectively with particular preference for the cis isomers has met with limited success in the past. Kobayashi [4a] has reported the formation of furano[3,2-c]quinoline with 62 % cis selectivity using (polyallyl)scandium trifylamide ditriflate as a catalyst. More recently, Yadav [9] has demonstrated the utility of Selectfluor TM as a catalyst to generate about 90 % yields of cis pyrano-and furanoquinolines. Therefore, it is still necessary to develop new and efficient catalysts for stereoselective syntheses of tetrahydroquinolines to make better use of this one-pot synthesis methodology.On the other hand, SmI 2 has served as a Lewis acid-type precatalyst and has been applied to a variety of reactions. [10] In our ongoing research into developing SmI 2 as a precatalyst in organic synthesis, [11] we investigated one-pot iminoDiels-Alder reactions of aldehydes and amines with dihydropyran or dihydrofuran in the presence of catalytic amount of SmI 2 . It was found that SmI 2 was effective for this process and that the stereoselective synthesis of pyrano[3,2-c]-and furano[3,2-c]quinolines could conveniently be effected through control of the reaction conditions. We now wish to report on these results.
Results and DiscussionTo select favorable reaction conditions, we first examined the model re...